Kings, queens, knights, and pawns took centre stage at Sarnia's Holy Trinity elementary on Tuesday.
The St. Clair Catholic District School Board hosted its 34th annual chess tournament, featuring over 200 students from a dozen schools.
Organizer Chris Vaillant, a French teacher with the board, said chess is a tremendous learning tool.
"It's a fantastic opportunity for our students to come and display their abilities in problem solving, critical thinking skills," he said. "And it gives an opportunity for those students to represent their schools, maybe in a capacity that they previously haven't had an opportunity to do so in."
Vaillant said in every game, players are faced with challenges and problems that they have to solve.
"So at each school we have a chess club, generally, which is a great activity for students to do in those cold winter days where maybe we can't get outside, so it gives those students an outlet," he said. "And this is kind of the culmination of that, where they can finally take those skills that maybe they've refined over the winter and they can come here and put them to use."
Vaillant said each school brings their own little portion of chess boards. He also said tons of volunteer hours go into the tournament.
"Teacher hours are put into it, all of the teachers running the clubs, and then there's the administration just running this whole operation at a host school," said Vaillant. "So it's always a big operation getting all of those students from across the county here to one school."
Vaillant said the board grew this project so large that they've now split the tournament into a north part and a south part. A separate tournament in Chatham is set for Thursday.
Vaillant added that each tournament also has a separate girls' division and scoring system.
"Because we really want to encourage female participation in what's usually a pretty male-dominated activity," he said. "So we like to bring a little highlight to that."
