Today morning Su Lin again went to the chess club by herself as she had been for a whole week. For some reason, the scene was bustling. There were a lot of parents talking and kids babbling, completely different from the usual scene of silent sombriety.
"We are having a tactical problem solving competition," one of the kids whispered to Su Lin. This kid was called Lin Cheng, and he was one of the more extroverted children in the group. At eight years, he was also one of the older kids and the others often followed his lead. His chubby face had a look of superiority as he told Su Lin, this complete newb.
"What's that?" Su Lin inquired.
"See the different positions set on those fifteen boards? The instructor will tell us who will first move in each of those positions, and who will win in the end. We have to guess the first move and the following sequence of most likely moves. Whoever solves the fastest will gain the highest 'tactical points'. Then counting the total number of tactical points for all fifteen positions, we decide who gets the big prize," Lin Cheng explained in detail.
"What's this big prize?" Su Lin asked.
"Of course it's a great prize, but you shouldn't get any ideas about it," Lin Cheng said complacently. "It's an electronic tablet with a chess app subscription. With the app, you can play chess, analyze, solve problems, watch others play games and even sign up to have mentors. Naturally, it will be mine after today's class."
After a few minutes when everyone had settled down, Gao Han explained the rules. All the participating children were given a sheet of paper with their names on it. They had to write their solutions on this paper. Each of them also had a stopwatch to record their times at each chess board. Once they finished at a board, they could not come back to it again.
Su Lin started from the last board since it was less crowded here. The problem was "black to play and checkmate in four moves." Link for the position setup here: https://bit.ly/2KzMA9O
The stopwatch started counting the seconds. Su Lin pondered for a couple of minutes. Her eyes shone as she found the key move. She started quickly writing down the notations:
1...Qxh2 2. Kxh2 Nxf3 3. Kh1 Rh8 4. Rh2 Rxh2#
She also found another variation with 2. Kf1 Qxg2, and noted this down too. Looking at the stopwatch, it was already five minutes.
Su Lin thought she was too slow. She moved to the next board and quickly tried to think of the solution. She spent twenty minutes solving the next seven boards. She wanted to solve faster, and win the prize. That would probably make her mom proud, right? But the more she tried to think this way, the more tensed she became and her chess calculations were distracted. She took deep breaths to calm herself down, counted sheep until thirty, and focused on the board again.
Finally, after forty-seven minutes, she had solved all the problems and handed in her solution sheet to the instructor. Nine other children had also handed in their sheets, a few of them much earlier than Su Lin. The rest of the kids were still working on the problems. After an hour, everyone was done. Gao Han gave them a twenty minute break while he corrected the scoresheets. Everyone waited in anticipation.
At long last, Gao Han was done. "Each of our 15 problems was worth 6 points. The one with a full score in of 90/90 is Lin Cheng. He got all the problems right in only forty-two minutes. Well done, Lin Cheng!" Gao Han announced. Everyone applauded. Lin Cheng got up to collect his prize.
But to his surprise, Gao Han continued. "Lin Cheng did great, but someone did even better. This person snatched the bonus 10 points for solving the hidden variations, for a total score of 100. As we know, in chess, each move can be responded to by the opponent in different ways. Solving these variations in addition to the main move demonstrates flexibility in thinking. A big hand for Su Lin, who solved not only perfectly, but also found the solutions to possible variations in forty-seven minutes!"
Su Lin was shocked. The others were shocked too. Lin Cheng looked like he had eaten a fly. After all, he knew that Su Lin had only learnt chess for one week; but he had learnt for almost a year. When he had learnt chess for one week, he couldn't even solve one of today's problems. Was this the difference in talent? Lin Cheng did not believe it. Why could a little girl beat him? She must have learnt chess at home before she came to the academy. She definitely cheated. No way could he be worse than a soft little girlie.
Su Lin was delighted. She collected her prize and hurried home without talking to anyone. She wanted to get home quickly and call her mom. She wanted to get her praise.
After reaching home, Su Lin called her mom. The phone was switched off. Nothing to be done- mom was at work. Su Lin waited at the door impatiently. At 4pm in the afternoon, it was past the time her mom returned from work. The call still wouldn't connect.