ChGK in the Prairie

Chapter 7: First Taste of the ChGK Worlds

November 2040. While both financial literacy training and Congressional debate have been expanded to allow all psychiatric hospital patients, the most complicated to implement was the screening. The survey ran for several weeks and was distributed among all long-term care patients and their families. But even when the survey's results were sufficiently convincing to persuade the board to go ahead with the screening protocol, the hospital couldn't implement it without first going through a competitive bidding process.

However, on Friday night, they realize that something is not right as they watch the opening ceremony of the ChGK Worlds, held in Helsinki this year.

"Too bad our MAK rating wasn't as high as we hoped" Yakiv points out.

"MAK rating?" Patricia asks, raising her eyebrows.

"The MAK rating, also called the MAII or, less commonly the IAMG rating, is a rating used in ChGK to gauge the relative strength of teams" Bohdan explains to the newest players. "While it goes without saying that playing in more tournaments correlates with higher MAK ratings, how a tournament affects one's MAK rating is mostly based on three factors: the type of tournament, its field strength, and how well you place"

"We entered the International League, then bi-weekly tournaments, before and since, such as the Marseillaise, on the week of July the fourteenth. But no one would have expected us to make it to the top-one hundred at the International League, even with Patricia" Vira then tells the group.

"Of course, we shouldn't expect the US to do well at Worlds, we never do" the sixth player comments, then leaning on his chair.

And then questions resurface in Patricia's mind, but she didn't feel it was appropriate to ask them until now. They kept mentioning the ChGK Worlds for months, but not how to qualify for it. All I could make out was that winning Nats was a way for us to get there, Patricia muses upon hearing about more technicalities of the competitive version of the game. It's not by being tied for 97th place, out of over a thousand teams, at the International League that we will be in position to win Nats next year! Or even compete at Worlds!

Meanwhile, Sergei is busy preparing the popcorn, while his mother gets the original, Russian-language IAMG's livestream on the screen. Then they realize that teams, at the ChGK Worlds, are referred to as "Team of X", where X is the captain, even though, in other tournaments, they are called, say, Al-Azhar or Saturday 13.

"Since the US doesn't stand a chance at the ChGK Worlds, I suppose we root for Ukraine this time around. Or, really, anyone other than Russia or Belarus" Yakiv then makes his point, fist up in the air. He then proceeds to shout, "Slava Ukraini!"

"As much as Belarus and Russia carry personal significance to you all, other countries playing at ChGK Worlds that are easy to hate for people around us include North Korea, Iran and, to a lesser extent, Syria" Patricia comments on how people around her could perceive some countries.

"We beat Syria and North Korea at the International League, but Iran didn't play. But, if we are to push for the ChGK Worlds, we are going to need to beat the big teams, and it's not just Belarus or Russia. China, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine even" Vira warns her teammates. "Typically, wildcards, up to a maximum of five, are given to national teams from emerging ChGK countries"

Rumors are that Iran ate up one of the wildcards this year. I guess we never fully explained ChGK Worlds qualification procedures to my son and to Patricia, Vira muses, while realizing that the time has come for these two to know more about the topic. Especially given when she harbors aspirations of playing at the ChGK Worlds and she believes that knowledge would help motivate the youngest 2 players, motivate them to play and train better.