Crockett Berry, a freshman, has won four chess games in a row against fellow freshman Blake Kekish. 

Stuck in a new chess match, Kekish uses the ‘Bomb Cloud’ opening to take the advantage in the boys’ current game. 

What Berry doesn’t know is that the ‘Bomb Cloud’ technique isn’t real, but Kekish uses the fake strategy to get into Crockett’s head. Kekish’s strategy works and he ultimately takes Crockett’s king to win their last game. 

“Every classmate here improves my experience besides Crockett,” Kekish said, when thinking about his classmates in the “Game Master” Interim Term class.  

The class, taught by Ms. Kacie Horton, Upper School science teacher, is about the origins of classic games and how they have developed. She said that strategy is a key to life.

 “I mean there’s a lot you can learn about strategy and a lot of it can be applicable in life in terms of problem solving,” Ms. Horton said. “There are things that I’m taking away from this class that I’m going to go and use.” 

In a corner of Ms. Horton’s classroom, five boys play “Among Us,” a computer game where crewmates must do tasks to beat the imposters who are trying to kill them. 

Freshmen Peter Liuzzi, Johnny Walters, Alexander Donnelly, Jack Kaplan and Colin Josephson start the game and Kaplan gets his first kill on Josephson.

“Jack is the impostor,” Liuzzi said.

“What? Why?,” Kaplan replied. 

“Because I was watching you on the cameras and witnessed you kill Colin in cold blood,” Liuzzi answered. 

The other players seemed surprised that Liuzzi caught Kaplan. Liuzzi eventually led his crew mates to victory.

Ms. Horton reviewed five core strategies that her students could use to win games, including foresight, reverse psychology, element of surprise and shifting. 

Students in her class could play variations of more than 50 board, card and computer games.

“It’s something that brings me a lot of joy,” Horton said.