Live chess tourney proposed
By: Linda Seida, Staff Writer
01/10/2007
Business owner Fred Strackhouse wants schools to participate to help Stockton businesses get over the winter slump.
STOCKTON — In medieval times, strategy at a royal court often meant the difference between survival and death or banishment.
A game of similar strategy and intrigue was played out on the squares of a chess board, showing the powerful queen, the stronghold of a castle or rook, a bishop for the church, the protecting knight, a king to be saved above all else and the lowly serf.
In 2007, a Stockton businessman hopes strategy still represents survival. Fred Strackhouse plans to set up a human chess tournament on squares marked off in the parking lot of his Stockton Inn to help the town’s businesses get over the winter slump.
High school students will move around the board as life-size pawns, knights, rooks, queens, kings and bishops. Participating schools would appoint their own respective chess masters to direct the moves of the “game pieces.” Possibly they’ll be costumed or wear their school colors or hold an emblem of the game piece they represent.
“They could do all kinds of things,” Mr. Strackhouse said.
Here is the full article. 
Cool idea! Very cool!