79 Sports Meet - part 4

The referee continued speaking while the participants looked at him in anticipation, not knowing what awaited them.

"The rules are as follows –

• Two competing players will sit with their backs to one another.

• The chess board will be kept away from them. They will not be able to see the board at any point in time.

• Each player will have to say their move out loud, and the moderator shall be moving the pieces accordingly.

• Each round will be an elimination round.

• The pairs in the first round will be decided by a draw of lots.

Any questions?" asked the referee.

Everyone looked at each other in shock! No questions were asked because everyone was struggling to make sense of the rules in that time.

None of them had even imagined, forget hearing about such a game. Some of the kids decided that the rules were too harsh and decided to withdraw their names from the challenge. Mriga had been looking forward to the contest knowing that she was a good player of the game. But with the new rules introduced, her mind dwindled about participating in this version and that too in front of a crowd.

Suddenly, she was reminded about what Shaurya had told her on one of their nightly sojourns.

He had said, "If you won't try it, how will test your inner mettle, the stuff that you are actually made of?"

She planted that mantra firmly in her head and told herself that it was just a contest. Finally, there were sixteen of them who decided to face this version of chess.

Mriga immediately thought back to the memory game which she had been playing with Prithvi during the past weeks and told herself that this version was probably as much a visual-memory game as it was a strategic one.

After three rounds of eliminations, Mriga found herself in the last round, facing a girl who was in her final year of studies. Gangadhaara was the student who had represented the Gurukul in the last year's international chess tournament held in Sapt Sindhu. Mriga's face fell. There was no way that she was going to get an upper hand against this competitor. In the previous three games, probably the fact that everyone had been introduced to these new rules at the same time, had helped. But after playing for a couple of hours now, her competitor would have managed to adapt herself well into the situation.

Half hour later

The board which was clearly visible to everyone in the room except the players, looked near empty. Mriga only had her King left and the senior was standing with her Knight and King on the board. They had played a blitz version of the game unlike the previous slow battles during the elimination rounds. Mriga's strategy from the beginning of the game had been to exchange pieces to advance in the game since she was aware of the senior girl's superior skills.

Unfortunately, on one of the exchanges, the senior got lucky and ended up saving her Knight. At this moment though, Mriga was happy to reach this stage because atleast from here she couldn't lose. It was most probably going to be a draw if none of them managed to get a check under hundred moves.

After 90 minutes

The game had been running on the same three pieces for the past hour. Mriga was beginning to display signs of restlessness. She was sighing loudly and cracking her knuckles in frustration. The other girl smiled as she absorbed all these reactions.

Mriga knew that the other girl had managed to get under her skin and she needed to try something different. She knew that a stalemate would be tough to get against the senior because she would be able to read her moves well. Even though stalemate meant a draw, it was superior to a normal draw for the person who forced it.

A stalemate meant that the King of the opponent was not under a check but had been cornered to a position where it couldn't move in any direction (much like a Panic Room in a bunker, safe but stuck).

Mriga decided to move her King from the center of the board to the corner. She knew that it was a risk that she was taking but…

Fifteen minutes later

The referee's voice rang in the hall, "Mrignayani has affected a stalemate to Gangadhaara, making the game result in a draw. Both the players shall be deemed as winners in this game."

When chess had been formulated as a game, the person giving the stalemate was considered the winner but in the past few decades or so, the rule definers of the game had decided to deem it as a draw.

Ganga shut her eyes to make sense of what had occurred in the last few minutes. She was well aware that she was the better player of the two but due to that knowledge, complacency had taken over her, after the initial threat of win and loss had been removed from the game.

Sometime ago, when she had sensed Mriga being impatient and agitated, she had let go of any and all sense of competitiveness and assumed that the game would end in a draw. Surprisingly, the younger girl had not only held on to her nerves till the end, but also managed to register a psychological win over her.

Ganga smiled to herself, "She is an interesting competitor to play against. I have learnt a valuable lesson today."