WVU, Carnegie Mellon go head-to-head in chess tournament
Posted: Monday, February 10, 2014 12:36 am | Updated: 12:40 am, Mon Feb 10, 2014.
By Daniel Schatz
The West Virginia University Chess Club challenged the Carnegie Mellon University Chess Team in an informal tournament in the Mountainlair Saturday.
The tournament consisted of two segments, with the first consisting of two lengthy chess matches. Carnegie Mellon won this segment from seven of the 10 games played.
Taiwo Ajayi, WVU Chess Club president and chemical engineering graduate student, has been playing chess for 12 years and won only one of the matches after losing to CMU’s top-seeded player.
The second segment consisted of five rounds of hard and fast blitz matches that last only five minutes each. For this segment, each player from CMU had the opportunity to play against each player from WVU.
This segment featured two of the club’s stronger players and a WVU employee of the Safety and Health Extension Office, Ajayi said.
WVU won this segment, which was determined by the cumulative points of the players.
The morning consisted of tactical cognitive activity, and the sharp thinkers exercised their abilities in friendly competition. Both teams discussed new ways to win and new strategies to solve the puzzle the opposition creates.
“Those are the things that catch my interest. That’s why I love chess,” Ajayi said.
Students looking for an opportunity to challenge themselves intellectually in a recreational way can join the WVU Chess Club. The club’s members vary in skill from beginner levels to experts, and club membership is not limited to students, as several members are employees of the University.
“It really gets you thinking, and I love solving puzzles,” Ajayi said. “Chess is all about just that: solving mysteries or using different tactics to try to weaken your opponent.”
Ajayi said chess challenges his intellectual ability, makes him more on his guard and provides him with critical thinking skill, which is useful in multiple areas of his life.
“People say when you’re good in chess, it helps you with mathematical calculations since chess is all about calculations, and if you can figure out ways to put yourself in a good position that requires a lot of calculations,” Ajayi said.
“So it really helps if you have that same attitude even toward your books, toward any kind of situation you find yourself challenged by.”
For more information on the WVU Chess Club, visit http://wvuchess.studentorgs.wvu.edu.
Source: http://www.thedaonline.com
Geniuses.