Category: blitz

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

Continuing last week’s free, unrated blitz tournament with a focus on establishing relative club member ratings, we held six rounds of the slightly slower G4;d4 this week and Hayden Brongersma prevailed over 24 other players with 5 points out of six, followed by three very strong players in a tie for second: Pranav Jindal, Breakwell Loyalka and Lauren Goodkind. Full results for the tournament and the updated club ratings follow in the attached images.

We’re still contemplating what we plan to do with this ratings experiment and perhaps that will become more clear as the weeks progress though, again, if you have any bright ideas about what we should be doing please let me know. Regards,

Mark Drury

We tried something a little different beginning with this week’s free, unrated blitz tournament — we gave all thirty players the same beginning rating with the thought that, over the course of 4-5 such blitz events, we’d come to better understand the relative strengths of club members’ blitz play. That, and there’s still some vague idea floating around that we’ll create a ladder, tournament and/or related prize structure based on ratings accrual and other factors over that time. More information will be shared as the idea crystalizes and please let me know if you have any opinions or ideas, of course.

Triet Vo had an excellent result in this large first event with a perfect 7 out of 7 score, while Hayden Brongersma sat alone in second a point behind. Pranav Jindal and Caleb Leong shared third with 5 points, Austin Chen was sole fifth at 4.5 and a swarm of strong players settled for T6 honors at 4 points. Full results are in the attached image and the SwissSys ratings report is also attached (it includes a couple anomalies that I’ll need to investigate). We will continue the blitz ratings folly in the coming weeks and hopefully it will be modestly entertaining as we figure out what we’re actually doing with this experiment. Regards,

Mark Drury