UoM LEOs: " SILENT MOVES " - The Ultimate CHESS Coaching Camp

“If you are not big enough to lose, you are not big enough to win”………………....

Chess.., it’s a game of two players, sometimes a battle of Titans and also it becomes a conflict of two minds in another time. However in all the times it’s an Art of Thinking… As it’s mentioned above, there’s something to learn in every game and it’s correctly said that selecting the best path makes the victory yours at the end. This is ‘Chess’ in brief as a game. Among all the other sports, chess is an Art which can be touched only by concentrated minds. It doesn’t matter who we are, the most important thing we should have to make anything a success is the concentration of our minds. So not like other ordinary sports, chess can be called as a universal sport which is kept open for all ages from little kids to old gentlemen. And by time it makes up their minds as it was never before. So as Leo Club of University of Moratuwa with lots of resources not only in academics but also in sports, we decided to come up with a project to become a helping hand to someone to develop this Art of thinking…

It came up with a tiny little name ‘SILENT MOVES’ as it means.

As soon as we confirmed the date it was the time to start advertising….Our fellow Leos were informed about the project through e-mails, face book event notifications and students of the school were got to know about the project by posters displayed on college notice board. And we designed a digital printed banner to display on that day. The main purpose of it was to give an idea about the organizing hand and Leoism to school students, their parents as well as the other participants

OBJECTIVES OF THE PROJECT

As it’s mentioned above the main objective of the project was to become a helping hand to someone in developing skills and improving knowledge in chess and also let them to share experiences with national level players who have excelled in national and international tournaments. We believe this project became a great opportunity not only for the other participants but also for our fellow Leos to have the same benefits. In another way it became a nice experience for all of us as the selected project location was far away from the university. So it made a great time and opportunity for us to discuss our future projects in free minds with being apart from our regular busy schedule…

An event like this cannot happen overnight; it needed an organizing structure and a scheduled time plan since this was a joint project done by UoM Leos in collaboration with university chess team and chess club of Bandarawela Central College. We wanted to have some projects with novel themes for the current Leoistic year. So several ideas were raised under sports projects from our fellow Leos and it was highlighted the importance of doing a children education project along with a leadership and skill enhancement project. In our monthly board meeting chaired by the president this idea about a chess coaching camp was came out and all the members raised their thumbs up to do this project.

Then the matter was to decide to whom we should bring this project. Lots of ideas were proposed and the final decision was to bring this project to Bandarawela Central College. There are several reasons for the above selection. Bandarawela Central College is a well known school for Chess in ‘Uva Province’ as they are the champions in recent years. But unlike in other schools no workshops or coaching camps were held in last few years in improving chess. So we thought those students are the most suited ones to deserve the benefits of this Silent but Strong movement.

On 1st of October, Saturday morning our fellow Leos with four members of UoM chess team including our club president and present captain of chess team started the journey to Bandarwela with a great purpose having in our mind. By the evening we reached to Bandarawela and stayed in the circuit bungalow as arranged before. Being apart from the busy regular life, it was a nice place to discuss and to collect ideas about the next day proceedings and our future Leo projects…

It was a day of hopes…, in every single commitment we completed everyone wanted to bring them to a successful end. The coaching camp was scheduled to begin at 8.00 am, and when we reached there, a lot of students had arrived to the place for participating in this event which was going to be an unforgettable experience to those little kids. First of all we were warmly welcomed by the vice principal with school staff. It is really appreciated that they had taken a great effort in organizing this event.

First, all the students were divided into three groups by considering their level under beginner, intermediate and advanced categories. Then the coaching camp was carried on the following guide lines and mainly focused on them.

Opening as white and black and opening methods
English Opening
Ruy Lopez
Sicilian Defence
King’s Gambit
Queen’s Gambit etc…

Different methods of mating with Queen, two Rooks, single Rook, two Bishops
Basic middle game and endgame strategies
Simple tactics and special moves
Recording games and using a chess clock
How to organize and select the board order of the team

The coaching camp was conducted as four sessions and after two sessions, all the participants were given refreshments and after an interval all the students gathered again for the next session which includes the latter part of the above program.The coaching camp was successfully completed and the most valuable achievement was the

feedback notes given by those little chess players. We as Leo Club of University of Moratuwa are really proud to organize such an event which will contribute in making those little minds into master minds to become international chess champions one day….