Month: November 2023

Thanks to the efforts and connections of Juan Cendejas and Cesar Tamondong, the top six boards of the final round of our club championship to be played Thursday, November 30th, at 7pm will be streamed live on both chess.com and DGT’s livechesscloud.com via the following links:

https://www.chess.com/events/2023-menlo-park-chess-club-championship
https://view.livechesscloud.com/#bffa7ace-751d-40a8-bf8f-9a324599ba3f

The pairings for the top six boards remain the same as in our previous post but there were some changes on the lower boards due to illness or withdrawal—the latest pairings are shared below for reference. This is an exciting first for our young club and likely won’t be the last time we dabble in this technology. Thank you, Juan and Cesar!

Our round 4 games were no less exciting than previous rounds and we saw a number of upsets, to boot. Below are the final round pairings, wall chart and prize group standings heading into the final round. As always, the pairings could change if someone is unable to play on the 30th, and I’ll update these tables asap if that’s the case.

Recall that the chess club will not meet this Thursday, the 23rd, due to Thanksgiving—please enjoy the holiday, everyone! Regards,

Mark Drury

The round 3 games were every bit as exciting as those in the previous round, with some narrow escapes, some clearly winning attacks which fizzled out and some interesting endgames, including that between Greg and Umar, which had a study-like quality about it given the opposite-color bishops. Again, I’ll try to get some of these games online during the Thanksgiving break next week, perhaps sooner.

Below are the pairings, wall chart and prize group standings for round 4. Anton is half a point clear in his group but fell ill this week and won’t be able to play Thursday, regrettably, though he still has an excellent chance at a prize with a draw or win in the final round. Hugo is also half a point clear in his group and we’ll see if he can keep that going when he plays Nikita this week. Note that a number of players have needed to take a zero-point bye given they’d already used the one half-point bye allowed in this event. That’s always unfortunate but there are a number of reasons why we use this rule–follow up with me Thursday if you have any questions.

Due to the odd number of players this round Umar gets the full-point bye though, as always, things could change in 24 hours if we get another bye request or the like–I’ll redo the pairings if I receive any such requests before 4pm Thursday. I look forward to seeing many of you tomorrow! Regards,

Mark Drury

Round 2 of our club championship was another exciting affair with a number of very close games, including several of those on the top boards. I will try to publish some or all of the games in a Lichess study, as with a couple of our previous events, a task which is always made easier if you send me a timely pgn file of your game score (thank you to those who are already doing so). The second and third tables below include the wall chart and the prize group standings, and all prizes remain very much up for grabs in each group. I’ve received the entry fee payment from a smattering of players so please send that along (or pay at the club) at your earliest convenience. Regards,

Mark Drury