Every year, as close as possible to the actual day of Halloween, Tokyo Bilingual Chess Club holds Halloween Scholastic Tournament. This year, we held on October 28, 2023, a shallow partial lunar eclipse night. The Tournament Director, Alex A., and Teacher Matt W. made the pairings each round and settled any type of dispute that arose during the game.  Please give them a respect for the difficult job they do.  We could not hold chess tournaments without them!

There were 17 brave souls, that came out during our Halloween Haunt from at least 15 schools.  This is one of the best tournaments since kids dressed up in their Halloween costumes were so focused and quiet during games! Although many people believe that chess is just a game, there are many scientific and artistic applications that the game has to offer. Halloween lends itself perfectly to the artistic elements of the game. Children played five rounds showing fine sportsmanship as well as fine ability. 

When two or more players ended up with the same score, we will have a blitz chess play-off, in which champions play one game of five-minute chess to determine who wins which medal.

We had two sections and the winners after tie-breaks were:

Class A: Leo P T with 4.0/5.0

Class A: Ryo N 4.0/5.0

Class A: Tristan C with 3.0/5.0

Class A: Dario S G with 3.0/5.0

Class A: Hiroki A with 3.0/5.0

Class B: Yunjia Z with 5.0/5.0

Class B: Shota Y with 4.0/5.0

Class B: Saya K with 3.0/5.0

Congratulations on the 1st place to Leo, who has been improved dramatically, & Yunjia, who participated our tournament for the first time!

What would our Halloween Tournament be without a costume contest? Kids and teachers dressed up with the spooky costumes and Joma S dressed as ”Dog Man" won the best costume prize!