I, Captain - I Report

The first few posts after the "revival" of this blog has been mostly teasers of what's to come in future posts. And I hoped that it helped to provide a sense of anticipation. For my part, it has helped to sharpen the focus of what I will be doing and blogging about in the next few weeks and months. But before I proceed any further, I think it's only proper that I look back to a memorable event that transpired last year.


Sometime February 2007, Austin, the webmaster of schemingmind.com, informed me that someone anonymously gave me a one year full membership in the site. As I have mentioned before, the full membership carries with it several benefits that I was really excited to utilize. These included the capability to create teams and mini-tournaments; join more than one team; and play unlimited number of games.


The very first day of being a full member, I was able to create a national team (Team Philippines) and had a couple of recruits to join me. Likewise, I created a couple of mini-tournaments to cater to varying levels of expertise of players in the game, of which I happily joined a couple. It felt good not to be limited by the maximum game quota, but in the back of my mind I have to be careful not to overextend myself. This is a topic I discussed also in my series Discipline in Correspondence Chess (please check the sidebar for the link).


Sad to say (in a way), real life beckons and just a few months after, I had been too busy to even play games at the site. Not that I mind, when the cause is the anticipation of my second child. However, I have a responsibility not to let such generosity go to waste. I arranged with Austin for the transfer of my full membership and team captainship to a teammate that I fully trust will be able to handle the activities of the team.

More than a year after, I am glad to report that Team Philippines has at least maintained its initial number of members before I became "inactive". There are some that simply no longer returned, but their places were filled up with new blood. For my part when I was able to get back on track (it's a girl!), I did my best to attract new members into the team by challenging my countrymen that just registered in the site, and so establish contact with them. More than half of them responded to my invitation to join Team Philippines.

So, for that generous soul that gave me (and my teammate) the opportunity to enjoy a full membership at Schemingmind, thank you very much. I hope you are able to see that it did not get spent for nought. May your tribe increase!