Cole Holst

Daniel Cryer

Comp II

February 12th, 2018

Drake Waters Chess Community

            Chess is a game that means different things to different people. To some chess is a symbol that someone is intelligent, while to others chess is a way to expand a way of thinking. To Drake Waters, chess is a fun pass time that gives him the chance to be social with people, make friends, and build his leadership skills that he can use later on in his life. Drake has gained many skills and met many different people thanks to chess.

            Drake Waters got his start in chess about two years ago thanks to his Mom’s Boyfriend, Chuck, at the time. Now Chuck was not some schmuck that just taught Drake the basics. Chuck had been learning about chess for a while now and has been taking private lessons then decided to pass that knowledge on to Drake. When Drake showed some interest in chess Mom’s boyfriend had taught some of the basics and some starting strategies to help Drake get on his way to turning this interest into a hobby. Drake, with his new found chess knowledge, goes on to meet the next person to help him continue his journey into the chess community.

            Drake finds his next teacher in the JCCC Student Center Cafeteria. Drake meets a man named Frank in the Student Center reading a book with a chessboard in front of him. Drake asks Frank to play and, as Drake puts it, “I sit down and get ANNIHALATED in four moves because he has been playing for 60 some odd years and I come up as a complete amateur.” This did not dissuade Drake though as he plays four more rounds of chess with Frank. “That’s how it started but the one thing I remember vividly, after we played four games of chess is that, as I was getting up for class, he said ‘If you come back I can make you a good chess player’ and I said ‘Hell yea, Okay!’…” This was the point in which Drake continued to get better at the game chess with the help of Frank. In 2017, Drake became Vice-president of the JCCC Chess Club (JCCCCC) and in 2018 became the President of JCCCCC.

            Drake has new responsibilities now that he is the President of the Chess Club. He explains that his main responsibilities are making sure that the Chess Club has ten members at a minimum and that they have tournaments and fundraisers for the club to earn money. “As far as a President specifically, I make sure the tournaments are in order, we have dates for one, we have enough people to play, and then when I have that information for the number of people I give that to Frank and he will categorize it.”

Now it may sound like just that stuff is taxing and super responsible Drake still has time to have fun with it all. He wanted to make t-shirts for the club that would have had Chess Club acronym with the JCCC outlined in red and the last two C’s out lined in gold with a crown on top of them and on the back was going to be the saying “Dominate in Silence.” Unfortunately, these shirts would have costed $22 a shirt. “Yea, it got a little expensive that is why I was like ‘Frank we need to have like six tournaments, tournaments all the time so we can have these bad ass shirts’.” Drake being the social butterfly and open person he is has tons of fun being the President. Being President, he has to be open when he gets people from all walks-of-life want to be part of the club. Recruiting is also a job of the President and Drake usually uses checkers a springboard for getting people to play and possibly join the Chess Club. “No, but it’s great, everybody knows how to play checkers so I tell them ‘It’s practically the same thing, you have more pieces and they do a bit more’.” Drake has the most fun being President when he is recruiting people and talking to his members.

Thanks to chess, Drake’s way of thinking of everyday things has changed. In chess, people have to think so many moves ahead of their opponent. The thought process is like a branching tree, once a move is made people have to think of different moves to make for different pieces eight turns in the future. “I remember one time I was sitting, playing chess for 3 hours, nonstop, just game after game after game, I got up and I was woozey. I was like ‘Oh my god.’ I felt drunk because of the brain power used and how much I was trying to sit there focus constantly.” This kind of thinking and to a lesser extent, brainpower goes into other parts of Drakes life. When he does mundane things, he thinks like a chess player. “When I’m talking to people, and that’s where it helps to be social, you think farther ahead than you normally would for a casual conversation. You try to… if you want a certain person to say something you plan the conversation out before you have it to try to get them to say something, whether you want to be a dick about it, whether you want to be nice about it, there are just different ways to go about it.” This kind of thinking goes into how he dresses, how he eats, when he drives, even into his plans for the future.

When Drake knew how to play chess and got better at it, he tried to raise his rank in the chess community. “For a while I wanted to try to get a Grandmaster status, which from what I’ve heard takes a life time to do.” Drake wanted to make it far in the chess community for the titles. “…That’s what I wanted to do because I was really big into titles. I also wanted to be knighted and become a sir, so I wanted to be Sir Grand Master Drake Waters.” Chess.com has a ranking system on its website, Drake, at a time, was ranked around 1100, and that put him about a third of the way there but because of time and life Drake has decided to keep the chess as a hobby instead of a career.

Drake Waters is a man of many talents and chess is the one that has come to the forefront of this paper. With chess, he has a way to be sociable with people and get to be a teacher to some and help them find an interest. Chess has expanded his way of thinking to be a few steps ahead of most people.