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A4c Variant Results & No Chess Meeting May 7th

First and foremost, the chess club will not meet tomorrow, May 7th, given I need to be out of town and had neither the time nor the wherewithal to secure approval from recreation center staff for my replacement (it’s more complicated at Arrillaga given one typically must have a contract in place with the city to serve as the instructor for a club or class, even as a temporary stand-in). Apologies for the short notice but we will definitely meet again next week, May 14th, at the usual time.

We’ve held two variant events since my last update and, regrettably, the SwissSys software did what it sometimes does after the final round of our Freestyle Chess with Draft event back on April 23rd, failing to save the final round results even though I did so at least three times before leaving the club that evening. I discovered the error several days after the fact and wasn’t able to reliably reconstruct what happened in the fifth and final round, though I may still try to do that if enough people are interested.

There was no such problem with our A4c Variant tournament last week, however, and after four rounds of this metagame within a game, best of three games in ten minutes format Hayden Brongersma stood alone with a perfect 4.0 points. Four strong players tied for second a full point behind: Pranav Jindal, Lauren Goodkind, Austin Chen and Cameron Troy, while Yoyo He secured sole sixth with 2.5 points. Full results are in the attached image, thank you to everyone who joined us and we’ll play this variant again soon, given most people expressed enthusiasm for it.

The other item of note is that I’ve updated the club Events page at to reflect the fact that we now plan to hold our next rated tournament in June. I cannot be at the club May 28th and that coupled with the closure this week made a rated event more difficult to schedule. I’ll update the June 4th event with more information as soon as I have it and please let me know in the meantime if you have any questions or preferences where that is concerned. Regards,

Mark Drury

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Freestyle Chess (Chess960) with Draft Tonight

Just a reminder that we plan to hold a Freestyle Chess (Chess960) with draft event this evening, likely G/5;d3 of four or five rounds, followed by an A4c Variant tournament the following week, and we will combine the scores from both events to determine the winners of book prizes donated by a former club member. More details about both events may be found at the following links:

https://menloparkchess.club/event/chess960-draft-tournament-2/

https://menloparkchess.club/event/a4c-variant-tournament-4/

In related news, we’ve had repeated requests to hold theme tournaments, specifically for various well-known gambit lines, one gambit per week over several weeks at slightly longer time controls, like G/5 or G/7 with a 3-second delay, say. I’m still mulling this over but we may do this in May, before our next rated tournament. If you have an opinion about either please let me know and we’ll likely discuss this at the club tonight — I hope to see many of you there! Regards,

Mark Drury

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Impromptu Blitz #61 Results

We enjoyed another excellent turnout for last night’s free, unrated blitz tournament and I may dub this event the inaugural “Where the heck is Hayden?!” blitzfest, given we opted for his suggested G/3 of nine or ten rounds and he wasn’t able to join us (all jesting aside, we hope everything is okay on your end, Hayden).

Filling the considerable void left by Hayden’s absence, however, were no fewer than six first-time visitors to the club, including Max Elisman, a very strong player who tied for first place with Pranav Jindal, Austin Chen and Alex Chin at 7.0 points. Sharing fifth place one point behind that group of blitz worthies were David Flores, Breakwell Loyalka and newcomer Sam Bekker. We ended up playing just nine rounds and I think that was more than enough, given the glazed expression most people were wearing near the end of the evening.

Full results are in the attached image and our club/unofficial blitz ratings and club blitz points pages have been updated at the following links:

https://menloparkchess.club/ladders/club-unofficial-blitz-ratings/

https://menloparkchess.club/ladders/club-blitz-points-standings/

The tentative plan for next Thursday is Chess960 Draft followed by the A4c Variant April 30th and I think we’re going to offer book prizes to those who score well in both events combined. More information about those two tournaments will be available in a few days. Regards,

Mark Drury

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Impromptu Blitz #60 Results

Attached are the results for last week’s blitz tournament, seven rounds of G/3+2 as is our wont. Relative newcomer NM Dmitry Dzhanhirov enjoyed another excellent showing with 6.5 points, a full point and a half ahead of second place finishers Pranav Jindal and Hayden Brongersma, while no fewer than six players tied for fourth at 4.5. Full results are in the attached image and we’ll do something similar at the club this evening for those who are interested.

Our latest club blitz ratings and blitz point standings pages have also been updated and are available via the following links:

https://menloparkchess.club/ladders/club-unofficial-blitz-ratings/

https://menloparkchess.club/ladders/club-blitz-points-standings/

A vague notion about what we’ll do with the above is swirling in the ol’ noggin and I’ll run the idea by those at the club this evening to see if there’s any interest — I hope to see many of you there! Regards,

Mark Drury

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Impromptu Blitz #59 Results & Updated Events Calendar

This past Thursday saw both an excellent lecture from Frisco Del Rosario as well as another strong showing for our free, unrated blitz tournament series, with four first-time visitors and three masters participating. After seven rounds of G/3+2 chess FIDE Master and former World Youth Under-12 Co-Champion Rayan Taghizadeh stood alone in first with 6.5 points, his lone draw ceded to our second place finisher at 5.5, NM Dmitry Dzhanhirov. Club stalwarts Hayden Brongersma, Nicholas Tan and Cameron Troy tied for third at 5.0 while Austin Chen was alone in sixth at 4.5. Full results are in the attached wall chart and I’ve also included the updated club blitz point totals and club blitz ratings, the eventual purpose of which remains embarrassingly unclear at this time.

In other chess news, our very own Lauren Goodkind enjoyed an excellent result at the XVII Campeonato Continental Femenino de Ajedrez de Las Américas 2026 (17th American Women’s Continental Championship 2026), with a score of 5.0 points out of nine games and the distinction of being the top untitled player. Well done, Lauren, and perhaps a FIDE title of your own is soon in the offing!

Lastly for now, the club’s Events page (https://menloparkchess.club/events/) has been updated through the beginning of May and, to summarize, we’ll have two more weeks of casual blitz events followed by Chess960 Draft on April 23rd and an A4c Variant tournament on the 30th, then I hope to begin our next rated event May 7th — more details about that will be shared soon. Regards,

Mark Drury

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March Quadness & Impromptu Blitz #58 Results

We had an excellent turnout last Thursday for another free, unrated, 7-round G/3+2 blitz tournament, with 31 participants and a number of spectators at the club. There was even some urging from the younger players to venture eight rounds in this event, given we may have had time, but cooler heads prevailed and we called it after seven, with NM Dmitri Dzhangirov and first-time visitor Matthew Yang sharing first place at 6.0 points. Another first-time visitor, Askar Nurbekov, tied for third with club stalwart Yoyo He at 5.5 points, while young Austin Chen stood alone in fifth at 5.0 out of 7. The number of strong blitz players (self excluded) having to settle for 4.0 or less is testament to the competitiveness of this tournament — complete results are in the attached image.

We didn’t use our nascent club blitz ratings in last week’s event because I got a late start setting up the tournament in SwissSys but we will continue that practice this week, when we’ll hold another G/3+2 blitz tournament, given that appears to be the favored time control for most — I hope to see many of you then!

In other club news, our March Quadness event wrapped up last week (with a single makeup game) and most of the quads were competitive, even if the scores didn’t appear to indicate as much. I lost all three games in my quad but was able to sac a knight on f7 in two of them, with a clear nod to club lecturer Frisco Del Rosario when doing so, though I failed to convert in either due to poor time management, a surprise to no one. Full results for all quads may be viewed at https://ratings.uschess.org/event/202603260373 and we’ll hold another rated event beginning late April or early May — more details about that will be shared here soon. Regards,

Mark Drury

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Impromptu Blitz #57 Results

We enjoyed another excellent turnout at the club this past Thursday and 29 people participated in seven rounds of G/3+2 blitz from 7:00-8:30pm. When all was said and done second-time visitor Thomas Allard stood alone atop the wall chart with 6 points out of 7, no surprise given he has a ~2300 blitz rating on chess.com. One half point behind Thomas in sole second was first-time visitor Dmitry Dzhanhirov, a National Master and very strong blitz player in his own right. Club stalwarts Pranav Jindal and Hayden Brongersma shared third at 5.0 while two of the strongest juniors in the club, Austin Chen and Caleb Leong, tied for fifth at 4.5. Full results as well as the latest club blitz ratings and blitz point totals may be seen in the attached images and thank you to everyone who joined us for this fun, free event!

As of this post we have four spots remaining in our March Quadness event beginning Thursday, March 5th. Please register asap if you wish to play as I plan to share the tentative quad groups Monday or Tuesday of this week. Note that we will not hold the unrated blitz tournaments while the quads are in progress but I anticipate we’ll pick that up again March 26th or April 2nd, at the latest, while our next rated event will likely begin in late April or early May—please let me know if you have any suggestions for that or other club events, as always. Regards,

Mark Drury

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Impromptu Blitz #56 Results

Twenty-six people joined our latest “impromptu” blitz tournament, with several first-time and returning visitors participating in seven rounds of G/3+2 chess over 90 or so minutes. Hayden Brongersma once again emerged victorious with 5.5 points out of 7, his lone loss coming in the final round against second-place finisher Yoyo He. Yoyo tied for second at 5 points with Austin Chen and newcomer Thomas Allard, Lauren Goodkind and the club’s house patzer tied for fifth at 4.5 and there followed a raft of strong players in the 4.0 scrum. Full results are in the attached image, along with the latest blitz point totals and club blitz ratings — thank you, as always, to everyone who joined us for this event.

One particularly interesting game between two veteran if cheeky players saw a speculative double under-promotion to two bishops (of opposite colors, thankfully), leaving the king and two prelates against lone king. In the ensuing endgame it became a little unclear if the bishopmonger would garner the full point, given mutual time trouble and a protracted dance around the board by all the pieces, but in the end Hayden the bishops prevailed in a nice demonstration of that mating pattern.

We’ll hold one more impromptu blitz tournament February 26th before beginning our “March Quadness” event on the 5th of next month. If you have not yet registered for the quads please do so asap. Regards,

Mark Drury

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“March Quadness” Registration Opens

With apologies to fans of NCAA Basketball, our next dual-rated quads tournament begins March 5th and runs three consecutive weeks, with a possible makeup round scheduled for March 26th if needed. More details and a registration link may be found here — please register asap if you wish to play in this event as we’re limiting the field to 28 players this time around (7 quads).

Relatedly, the results of our recently-concluded club survey may be seen below and made clear people prefer that our next rated event have a longer time control, so the quads will be played at G/45;d5, one game per evening. In addition to the data shared below we received a large number of helpful comments and suggestions so we’ll try to incorporate all that we can in upcoming events — thank you to those who took the time to complete the survey! Regards,

Mark Drury

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Impromptu Blitz #55 Results

Pranav Jindal found his usual excellent form over the past two weeks, given he won clear first in both of our blitz events during that time, this week with 6.5 points in seven rounds of G/3+2 action, arguably the most popular blitz time control at the club. Twenty-nine people joined the fray, including first-time visitors Carlos Alva, Mert Unsal, Soham Gurjar and Ruperto Guirnela.

Right behind Pranav at 6.0 points and in second place was David Flores, a very strong blitz player who returned to the club after having been away for some time, while Breakwell Loyalka, Cesar Tamondong and Carlos Alva shared third at 5.0 points. Austin Chen managed to remain a half point ahead of the throng at 4.0 points, claiming sole sixth with 4.5, another excellent showing for this talented young player. Last Thursday also saw the return of Nicholas Tan, a longtime member who moved away but has since returned to the Bay Area, so hopefully we’ll see more of him in the future.

Full results for Thursday’s event as well as the latest blitz club ratings and blitz points totals may be viewed in the attached images and thank you once again to everyone who joins us for these free, fun, informal tournaments. Regards,

Mark Drury