Chess Eating
With all of the talk and excitement about chess boxing I thought I might suggest something new: “Chess Eating” or maybe you can call it “eating chess”
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I am talking about 1500 pounds of chess eating. You will be glad to know that I did not do all this eating on my own or you would probably be rolling me into the next tournament. I had some other people chess eating with me and we didn't eat it all... I still have 6 pieces from the chess board left (each piece weighs about 30 to 60 pounds). You might be a little confused because you might be thinking plastic doesn't taste good... I agree! But to... unconfusatize (un-cun-fuse-a-tize: to do something for or to someone or something to make them unconfused (Look it up in the dictionary and don't stop until you find it (you'll be looking for days... no understatement... years)) you, I will let you know it wasn't plastic. It was 100% solid chocolate.
Unfortunately I didn't get to play anybody with it... but it sure tasted good! It would have been so cool if I could have played a little kid, and then maybe played with a clock (that may have been a little too messy though, at least for the clock).
Now that the show has aired, I can FINALLY tell everyone about it! The cable TV station, The Learning Channel (TLC) came to our 1-day fundraiser camp back on March 6th (it's been a long time of silence). The fundraiser camp was held to help me raise money for the World Youth Championships in Greece this October. I was one of the instructors along with my older brothers and our good friends, The Treimans. Our parents were there too helping out. Apparently though, the others have been keeping it a secret for a lot longer than I have. I was the only instructor that didn't know about the big surprise (I guess my parents knew about it from the first part of February).
I thought it was really weird that there seemed to be so much more paper work than our other camps and when everyone got there they had to have their picture taken and an armband put on. No one was answering my questions as to why they were doing it though, so I just went along. For our camp, we taught in the morning, had lunch, and then we all did a simul in the afternoon (5 boards for each of us and the kids would switch in and out as games finished). The simul was suppose to go one hour, but ended up going two or more hours. They just kept saying, “Keep playing.” Again, I didn't know why and I thought it was really weird, but I just kept playing (I now know that they were running behind getting the chess board all set up). Now I love chess, but even I was getting a little tired. Finally our parents came in and lined us up youngest to oldest and told us that there was a surprise in the other room. When we went into the other room, there were all these people there with cameras. I guess that I was the only one in that room that was completely clueless, but I just went along with it all and did what I was told. My mom told us that there was a big surprise behind the curtain. At that point, I figured that it was probably a big chess set (the normal plastic one) that we would be able to play on. And then she told us that everything behind the curtain could be eaten. By then, I just stopped trying to guess and figured that I would know in a minute anyway. They finally opened the curtain and I could hardly believe it! It was huge!! We all ran on to the stage, and started eating. It wasn't just big, it was good too. I ate a little too much and I won’t go into the details of that
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One thing I have decided from this whole thing is that you can't believe everything you see on TV. Don’t get me wrong, the chocolate chess set was real and it was huge, but if you saw the show "The Little Chocolatiers" on May 4th then I should probably explain some things. The chess set was a gift from the Hatches (they do “The Little Chocolatiers”). TLC came to my parents because Steve and Katie had read about me in the paper and wanted to do something. The show makes it look like my mom ordered the chess set. We couldn't really pay for a chocolate chess set that was worth around $30,000. We only made $2,300 from the fundraiser (unfortunately not enough to cover it).
I am sorry that you all didn’t have the chance to see the chocolate chess set up close, but I will help you visualize it (we do that in chess). Have you ever seen one of those big plastic chess sets? If you said, “No” then visualization is over and I can't help you, but if you said, “Yes” then picture it in your head. Now take that big chess set in your mind and picture it as chocolate—milk chocolate for the black pieces and white chocolate for the white pieces. That is pretty much what it was.
I have decided that Chess Eating is much better than Chess Boxing... you should try it!
I would like to thank the Hatchs for the chess set. And Steve, if you read this because you decide to check out chess.com so that you can get better at chess and beat Katie, “THANK YOU!!” Give me a call, if you need help. I will be happy to give you a few chess tips.