Things I enjoyed reading
I used to play chess a lot. Checkers were a mandatory lesson at my school starting from the grade one, and chess came a few years later (with a choice of playing Go for those keen enough).
I also used to play chess tournaments a lot. My first encounter of such a tournament was upon reading Ilf and Petrov's book "The Twelve Chairs", which is a classic satirical novel on attempting to obtain jewelry hidden in a chair, and the main characters manage to bamboozle a village chess club with promises of an international tournament.
Our tournaments were different though. Since Soviet times there is a unified Sports Classification System in Russia, which divides players in almost any sports into multiple categories, from Third-Class Junior Sportsman to Merited Master of Sport.