Vancouver Island hosted a special guest from the world of chess, a chess grandmaster.<\/p>\n
There are fewer chess grandmasters in the world than billionaires and one of them was in Nanaimo to play against some of Vancouver Island\u2019s top chess players Saturday.<\/p>\n
With a handshake and opening move Samy Shoker, one of just 1,230 chess grandmasters in the world, starts playing nearly 20 of Vancouver Island\u2019s best chess players of all age categories.<\/p>\n
Now living in San Diego, the French born, Egyptian player, has been the French, Arab, and African champion and devotes five to six hours every day to the ultimate game of strategy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m excited. I\u2019m going to totally lose but I\u2019m going to have fun,\u201d said Kalen Leech-Porter, who\u2019s taken chess seriously in the past few years.<\/p>\n
Watch the story below:<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I heard that Samy was coming I had to sign up and get involved,\u201d said Rachel Williams, who\u2019s been playing chess since she was a child.<\/p>\n
And even though a grandmaster he\u2019s not guaranteeing he\u2019ll win all the games today<\/p>\n
\u201cTwenty boards at the same time is not so easy and this is what I always say to chess players. Don\u2019t underestimate your opponent. Don\u2019t overestimate your opponent. You can win or lose against anyone,\u201d said Shoker.<\/p>\n
The tournament moves quickly with each player showing their move to which Shoker quickly responds. The room is mentally intense. While a challenge, it\u2019s also meant to be a great learning experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe greatest thing we can do when we\u2019re learning from our games is have someone who knows the positions very well analyze it for us and show us, what we might have missed, what we did well, what we could improve on,\u201d said Finn Lynch, the tournament\u2019s director from Oceanside Chess Club.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese chess grandmasters are kind of built a little differently. They\u2019ve got these photographic memories and he\u2019ll be able to remember every move of every board that he\u2019s played and sit down with each player and discuss,\u201d said Mike Blakey, president of the Oceanside Chess Club.<\/p>\n
Eventually the players lose one by one and Shoker gives his advice.<\/p>\n
Until Shoker concedes a draw against Rachel Williams.<\/p>\n
\u201cDraw? Good job. You played well. You played a good game and you were almost winning. I was lucky to draw this position,\u201d said Shoker.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m thrilled as you can tell probably,\u201d said Williams, who called it a chess life highlight, while choking back tears. \u201cI love the game so much and to have an experience like this. You put a lot into it, a lifetime, really.\u201d<\/p>\n
Just playing Shoker is a highlight for all the players.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe chess match was two hours. It\u2019s just so hard to stay focused for the whole game,\u201d said Jonah Kolen-Lee, from Parksville, who ended up with either a draw or three-fold repetition against Shoker.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just play for fun. I\u2019m very pleased with how I played. It was very close the entire time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shoker says when he got the chance to play the best French player as a child it propelled his love of the game and he hopes his involvement today will do the same for others.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very good to see that there are very involved players and I really hope a great future for chess on Vancouver Island,\u201d said Shoker.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Vancouver Island hosted a special guest from the world of chess, a chess grandmaster. There are fewer chess…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":842044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194298],"tags":[49,48,55,1062],"class_list":["post-842043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vancouver","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-vancouver","tag-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=842043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/842044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=842043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=842043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=842043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}