On Monday 9th October, a chess tournament celebrated a schools program in Castlemaine, Victoria Australia.
Castlemaine, a picturesque country town 120kms north of Melbourne, has a wonderful history being the origin of Australia’s Gold Rush of the 1850’s. Heritage architecture paints an idyllic backdrop.
So, what a more fitting venue than The Old Castlemaine Gaol, built in 1861, to house 245 grade 5-6 students doing battle over the board.
Schools such as Yapeen, Elphinstone, Harcourt, Campbells Creek, are small outlying towns (many drought-stricken) consisting of some of the smallest, under resourced schools in Victoria.
The program secured funding to hire tutors from the Castlemaine Chess Club to visit classrooms on a weekly basis as part of the maths program.
Chess Kids, who run 190 schools tournaments a year Australia-wide, were amazed by the tournament, claiming it was the biggest rural event they have ever participated in- by about 100 students.
A blog, documenting the program development since May can be found:
http://mtalexandercluster.blogspot.com
Hi Susan,
Just a suggestion not related to this particular post, and to chess for that matter, but I’ve noticed that the first page of your blog is quite a heavy one, taking up more than 2 MB of traffic!
It would load quicker if it had less posts on it (mb something like 10?) I think most people are interested only in new posts anyway, or your regular readers they don’t read all the posts for current month every time, but have to download them. Not sure if it’s an easy thing to do with Blogger, but a lot of chess fans could feel releaved because in many contries the Internet is not that advanced as it is in the USA. Just a thought 8=)
And thanks for your great job, it’s outstanding!
Thank you Susan for posting this great Australian post on your blog…GM .SUSAN POLGAR…do you realise that this is most likely the first time Australia Chess has had such… World Publicity…..and what a wonderful way to do it with these great lot of school children from… Caclemaine Victoria Australia…..well done all the Teachers and students who helped organize this tournament..Let’s hope there is a future Chess Champion playing there ..a special thanks to Sam Grumout,Principals.Teachers and Students.
To the students..you chess will benefit a lot by following Susans blog..there are so many helpful items there
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Playing in a jail, eh? I can see it now: “Kid, you play than Morra Gambit one more time and we’ll throw you in solitary!” 😉
Hello was there an over all winner if so who? Some more pictures would be good.
Top job kids and teachers
Thanks Janice
GUT GEMACHT KINDER,UND WER HAT GEWONNEM? ANNEMARIE
MANNHEIM GERMANY
can anyone translate this german entry?
I had to have a another look at the article after translating it and also ad
it is very nice to have all the kids playing chess like this
thanks Peter Muller