We’ve been working on promoting a Chess festival here at Orchard, one of those slightly different events that are really good fun to work on. Because chess has a bit of mystique (they’re called grandmasters!) about it - people are interested in it when it crops up, even if, like me, they haven’t played a game in years.
When we were asked for ideas, there was one we just had to do – giant chess.
Admittedly it is not the most original of ideas – people have been using giant sets for years, and the design festival beat us to it as well. But, you can’t deny that it is a great way to take chess to the people. In our case we thought it had to be in Town, on a Saturday, somewhere prominent. So we took up residence on the market terrace in the morning, and stayed for most of the day.
We were quite busy and the public did get involved which was great. Mostly it was youngsters wanting to try their hand against experienced players in the hope of a very public upset. We also found two future grandmasters from Australia who treated us to a demonstration of their skills.
More pics after the jump:
For the record, I lasted about ten minutes against Fred, who’s a FIDE master. Quite pleased with that.
Posted by Chris.
