Join Us for Thursday Evening Chess on the San Francisco Peninsula
Just a quick update to let you know we will hold a typical “casual” chess evening tonight, with a lecture beginning at 6:30pm followed by a free, unrated blitz tournament round 7pm. Also, if you haven’t yet registered for our rated tournament beginning May 8th please do so asap at https://menloparkchess.club/event/may-dual-rated-g-45d5-swiss-in-two-sections-round-one/. I look forward to seeing many of you this evening! Regards,
Mark Drury
Apologies for the short notice (and the long message) but I am out of town today and next Thursday and will not be at the club either evening, regrettably, but we still plan to meet for casual play and Frisco’s lecture beginning at 6:30pm. If some of you are able to arrive early, round 6:15pm or so, to help set up the room that would be great. Having a few people help put away all the chess sets and boards round 8:45pm or earlier is also important, given the desk attendant, Harold, is typically ready to march out the door at 9pm sharp.
The chess equipment (boards and pieces) are in the usual cabinet in the Willow Room–Harold and several members know where it is stored. Note that the club chess clocks won’t be available this evening given they are at my home so please bring your clock or download one of the free apps onto your phone if you would like to play timed games tonight. Next week the club clocks will again be available.
Another scheduling change is that for our dual-rated G/45;d5 event, which will now begin May 8th and not next week. Sriram and I were looking at our calendars and it simply makes more sense to run that event in May, when we wouldn’t need a protracted break between rounds. I’ll follow up with everyone who has registered thus far with more details and will ask about continued interest in participating, bye requests, possible entry fee refunds and the like.
Lastly, we held one of our oddest impromptu blitz tournaments last week with a double-round G/1+5 (game in 1 minute with a 5-second increment) affair and, suffice to say, reviews were mixed on the time control. It was too short for an enjoyable blitz experience yet too long to warrant the double-round format, with sentiment seeming that most were glad to have tried it but don’t wish to do so again. When all eight rounds were finished Hayden Brongersma stood atop the field of 22 with 7 out of 8 points, followed a half point back by perennial wall chart-topper Pranav Jindal. Yash Shah and Liam Liu shared third at 6 points while relative newcomer Di Lin was alone in fifth at 5.0. Full results are in the attached image, thank you to everyone who slogged through this event with us and know that we’ll stick to more conventional blitz formats in the future. Regards,
Mark Drury
As some of you know, we were not able to play chess at the Arrillaga Family Recreation Center last week due, in the end, to a simple clerical error: the facility director didn’t have us “on the schedule” for the night and, thus, we couldn’t use their room for legal/liability reasons. A number of adults made the best of things by walking the two blocks to Barebottle Brewing Co. for chess and libations, but I do sincerely apologize to those of you who made the trek to the club and played no chess for your pains. I remained at the center until 7:20pm so hopefully I was able to get word of the cancelation to everyone who showed up that evening.
On the bright side, we are once again “on the schedule” and will meet this Thursday, April 3rd, for another casual evening with a lecture at 6:30 followed by a free, unrated blitz tournament round 7pm. Round one of the dual-rated tournament originally scheduled for tomorrow will now start on April 17th and the event will run over five weeks with rounds 2, 3 and 4 occurring April 24th, May 8th and May 15th, respectively (the week of May 1st will be another casual evening with a lecture and blitz tournament).
The club Events page (https://menloparkchess.club/events/) includes the full schedule through the end of May and if you wish to play in the dual-rated tournament now beginning on April 17th please register asap at:
https://menloparkchess.club/event/april-dual-rated-g-45d5-swiss-in-two-sections-round-one
As always, please let me know if you have any questions or comments and I look forward to seeing many of you at the club soon. Regards,
Mark Drury