Attached are the wall charts for our Impromptu Blitz tournaments of the past two weeks, with 22 and 28 players participating, respectively. #74 saw Pranav Jindal and Austin Chen tie for first with 6.0 points out of 7, while Sam Bekker and Carlos Jerez tied for third at 5.0 and, as ever, there followed a raft of strong players left gnashing their teeth at 4.0, still a respectable score in this crowd. #75 saw the return of Vedant Verma, a talented junior player who seems markedly stronger every time he visits the club. Vedant cruised to a 6.5-point first place finish, a full point ahead of second place finishers—you guessed it—Pranav Jindal, Austin Chen and Sam Bekker at 5.5, while visiting Chicagoan Max Newman managed sole fifth place at 5.0 (Max and I played an interesting game in round two which left me gnashing my teeth). Thank you to everyone who joined us for these tournaments, congratulations to our winners and we’ll do much the same next week, October 29th.
Registrations are now open for our annual club championship which begins November 5th. This is a five-round, dual-rated G/45;d5 event, one game per evening over five weeks, with a break for Thanksgiving November 26th. One bye is available for the event in any round save the last and we’ll be using Chess67 to run this tournament, so you’ll need to create an account thereon to register: https://chess67.com/club/menlo-park-chess-club/tournaments/fifth-menlo-park-chess-club-championship-20261105. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments and I hope to see you at the club soon. Regards,
Mark Drury
