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| JESSICA KOLDITZ / Scroll Illustration |
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Formed into their ranks, the rival armies stare at each other across the field of battle and await their orders.
The generals of these battles sit pensively at tables in the Nordic, across from their opponents Thursday night analyzing their pawns, rooks and bishops. BYU-Idaho’s first organized chess tournament (with an entry fee of $2) started just after 7 p.m. with a field of 18 competitors.
After several hours of single-elimination competition, only two players remained to match wits for the championship.
Jared Harvey, a senior from Flower Mound, Texas, and Karl Nordgren, a freshman from Sandy, Utah, started the championship match by each taking one of each other’s pawns.
Both agreed strategically they wanted to control the middle of the board, but Harvey castled his king into the back corner of the board, surrounded by two pawns and a rook. Meanwhile, Nordgren was moving his pieces out into the middle.
Harvey made the decisive move of the game early when he sacrificed a knight to draw Nordgren’s king out into the open so he couldn’t castle.
Castling is a special move in chess that is used to move a king to a safer area of the board. However, it can only be performed when the king hasn’t been moved from its original position.
From then on, Harvey slowly constricted his grip on Nordgren’s now vulnerable king while his own sat protected in the corner. The final blow came when Harvey managed to regain his queen by getting one of his pawns all the way to Nordgren’s side of the board.
The game ended with Harvey capturing six pawns, one bishop, both rooks and knights along with Nordgren’s queen. Nordgren ended with one pawn, two knights and bishops and one rook of Harvey’s.
For first and second place, Harvey and Nordgren won $16 and $11 gift certificates to Wal-Mart.
Pete Snedecor, a sophomore from Elmira, N.Y., and Brian Schultz, a senior from Santee, Calif., who organized the event for the Social Events Board, said the evening was a big success.
Schultz and Snedecor hope to hold larger double-elimination tournaments throughout the semester with more prizes for the winners.
