WILLAM TELL

WILLAM TELL If ever you visit Oriental Mindoro and lucky to meet Xander for a chess blitz match you're in for a treat as you will feel his Xander's Gambit which is comparable to the Great Wall of China. But what amuses us no end is he is always mentioning about Willam Tell every game. Whenever we asked "Who is William Tell?", he would just smile at us but he never give answer. Perhaps he is his foreign friend but we run out of time to check. Incidentally, he is a strong chess player! His notable performance at Board 2 in the in the last Inter-club Chess Championship in Quezon City (we represented United Chess Players of Calapan, Inc. the exact date escaped my memory) was amazing! We requested him to play for board 1 for the team's sake, notwithstanding his outstanding performance in Board 2. Unselfish that he is, he granted our request. In the end though, he was not able to get the Gold in Board 2 as he manage only to score in Board 1 a loss and a draw. Mabuhay ka Xander! Only now I was able to discover "Willam Tell" with the help of Google and I hope he is the same person that Xander is referring to. "The legend as told by Tschudi (ca. 1570) goes as follows: William Tell, who originally came from Bürglen, was known as a strong man and an expert shot with the crossbow. In his time, the Habsburg emperors of Austria were seeking to dominate Uri. Albrecht (or Hermann) Gessler, the newly appointed Austrian Vogt of Altdorf, raised a pole in the village's central square, hung his hat on top of it, and demanded that all the townsfolk bow before the hat. On 18 November 1307, Tell visited Altdorf with his young son and passed by the hat, publicly refusing to bow to it, and so was arrested. Gessler — intrigued by Tell's famed marksmanship, yet resentful of his defiance — devised a cruel punishment: Tell and his son would be executed, but he could redeem his life by shooting an apple off the head of his son, Walter, in a single attempt. Tell split the apple with a bolt from his crossbow.[1] But Gessler noticed that Tell had removed two crossbow bolts from his quiver, not one. Before releasing Tell, he asked why. Tell replied that if he had killed his son, he would have used the second bolt on Gessler himself. Gessler was angered, and had Tell bound. He was brought to Gessler's ship to be taken to his castle at Küssnacht to spend his newly won life in a dungeon. But, as a storm broke on Lake Lucerne, the soldiers were afraid that their boat would founder, and unbound Tell to steer with all his famed strength. Tell made use of the opportunity to escape, leaping from the boat at the rocky site now known as the Tellsplatte ("Tell's slab") and memorialized by the Tellskapelle. The Hohle Gasse between Immensee and KüssnachtTell ran cross-country to Küssnacht. As Gessler arrived, Tell assassinated him with the second crossbow bolt along a stretch of the road cut through the rock between Immensee and Küssnacht, now known as the Hohle Gasse.[2] Tell's blow for liberty sparked a rebellion, in which he played a leading part. That fed the impetus for the nascent Swiss Confederation. He fought again against Austria in the 1315 Battle of Morgarten. Tschudi also has an account of Tell's death in 1354, according to which he was killed trying to save a child from drowning in the Schächenbach river in Uri.[3]" If ever WE encounter XANDER over the Board we must beat him. For sure he would say; "Ubos tayo kay Willam Tell."