Chess has gained a new spot at school. Mr. Eric Boston and Mr. Brian Spencer sponsor this newfound group called chess club.
It is a club where people who like playing chess can go play in a more structured manner and meet others who like playing as well.
The club has not been active since the 2014-2015 school year due to not enough people being interested in being a part of the club.
“One of the students in the club, Joel Pierce, would see us playing and he was like I like to play chess and he started playing a little bit too. So we were just like, ‘What if we had a chess club?’” Boston said.
The club meeting is held after school from 3:20 to 4:20 on Tuesdays in Spencer’s classroom room 120.
The club started back up this year because people started to take an interest in chess and making new friends who share an interest with them.
The game is somewhat challenging if players jump straight in and have no idea how to play, even if the game looks easy to learn. The goal of chess is to force the opponent’s king into a rcorner while also losing the fewest pieces possible and not losing your king.
Chess players have multiple pieces ranging from pawns on the frontlines, rooks which are one of the most moveable pieces, and the king which has very limited movement on the board.
“Right now we are using Chess.com since most everyone (in chess club) has accounts already and they allow you to set up a club on there as well with like 30 people so we are kinda doing that right now,” Boston said.
There are many different types of chess but the one played here is the more well known version with pawns, rooks, knights, bishops, a queen, and a king which is 16 pieces in total. Each side starts out with eight pawns, two rooks, two bishops, two knights, one queen, and one king.
Anyone who is interested in joining the club can go and talk to either Boston or Spencer about joining the chess club.
“We are kinda going through the filling out phase of seeing where everyone is, ranking wise,” Boston said.
