Category: tournament

I wanted to share a few quick updates with the club, given it’s been a while since I posted here. First and foremost, a hearty congratulations are due to WFM Olivia Smith, who played board one for Wales at the recently-concluded Chess Olympiad in Budapest, Hungary. Olivia finished with an excellent score of 6/9 and one can only imagine what an amazing experience this must have been for her and her entire team (https://results.fide.com/olymp2024/olymp.php?ev_code=68&team=80). Well done, Olivia!

Second, attached are the results from our last three impromptu blitz tournaments at the club, all of which used the same G/4;d2 time control. Tomorrow, Thursday, we’ll continue with another excellent lecture from Frisco Del Rosario at 6:30pm then will hold Impromptu Blitz #26 round 7pm, as usual.

Third, I’m trying to decide upon our next tournament format, whether it should be rated or unrated, blitz or a longer time control, how many weeks it should run–all the usual questions rolling around in a TD’s head. If you have an opinion about the format for our next event please let me know and it may begin as soon as the second week of October.

We enjoyed another excellent lecture last Thursday courtesy of Frisco Del Rosario, one centered round a lesser-know rook sac theme which was most recently seen in high-level play about three weeks ago (between Caruana-Firouzja, see https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=2732198). Frisco’s lectures are quickly becoming one of my favorite aspects of the club, never mind the way he treats me in our blitz tournaments, and I highly recommend that you visit the club to see and learn for yourself (the lectures begin at 6:30 each Thursday).

Speaking of blitz tournaments, we had 21 players in our most recent G/5;d2 affair and the six rounds we played weren’t enough for many in attendance, given the general clamor for a seventh round (alas, we had too little time for a seventh inning). Despite a first-round bye and a second-round draw/save, Pranav Jindal wound up on top after the sixth round was complete with 5.0 points, followed closely by masters Mike Arne and Frisco Del Rosario at 4.5. Hayden Brongersma, Cesar Tamondong and Kornel Csernai rounded out the top six with 4.0 points apiece. The full results are in the attached image and thank you to everyone who participated in this event.

Note that we have 14 entries for our August Double-Round Quick-Rated Quads beginning this Thursday and the tournament will be more interesting if we get at least 16-24 players, so please sign up asap here if you plan to play. Also of note for you blitz players: we’ll hold our first US Chess-rated blitz tournament (perhaps two of them over two weeks) in September and I’ll send more information about that event once the details are finalized.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions, comments or suggestions for the club and I hope to see many of you this Thursday. Regards,

Mark Drury

This past Thursday we tried another Swiss event with the G/7;d2 time control over four rounds in two sections and the format was again well received. The only drawback was that some of the games finished quite early, leaving those players (typically younger) to wait for as much as ten minutes for the next round to begin, and when more than a few people are awaiting the next round the room tends to become loud. The noise was only a minor problem after two of the rounds so while not a huge issue it’s something for us to work on as a club (note that we wouldn’t stand for a similar noise level during a rated event).

Congratulations are due to Wentao Wu for winning the Open section with 3.5 out of four points, while Andy Applebaum, first-time visitor Edward Muginshteyn and Hayden Brongersma tied for second with 3.0 points (Hayden is taking up permanent residency in the top three spots of these events). In the Reserve section another first-time visitor, Zelin Fang, scored a 4.0 out of 4.0 to claim sole first while youngsters Austin Chen and Hugo Pu tied for second with 3.0 points. Thank you to all who played in this free, unrated tournament and will likely do something similar this week, ahead of a rated evening set to begin August 8th (more about that soon).

We enjoyed another excellent turnout for our Impromptu Blitz #16 Thursday, with some very strong players gracing our ranks and with Frisco Del Rosario, our reluctant blitz champion, once again claiming first place, this time in a tie with young Liam Liu at 4.5 out of 5 points. Pranav Jindal and Triet Vo tied for second at 4 points while Hayden Brongersma had another strong showing in sole 5th at 3.5. Thank you to everyone who joined us for this fun event!

We’ll hold another free blitz tournament this coming Thursday, May 23rd, likely with the same G/5;d2 time control, and the following week we’ll take our second foray into A4c chess with a tournament of three or four rounds. More information about that event and about the variant plus a registration link may be found here:

Please register ahead of time if you plan to play in this event, which typically helps us start closer to 7pm on tournament night. I hope to see many of you this Thursday and next! Regards,

Mark Drury

Twenty-three people participated in our Impromptu Blitz #14 tournament this past Thursday, a G/5;d2 affair which included four first-time visitors to the club—thank you again to Simon Rubinstein-Salzedo, Vin Armelin, Matt Kmiecik and Matt Mascioli for joining us in this event!

For perhaps the first time in one of our casual blitz tournaments we had a four-way tie for first at four out of five points, with Gabe, Kunal, Simon and Josen sharing top honors, while a raft of others tied for second at three points (juniors Max and Chase among them). We’ll hold another casual evening and blitz tournament this coming Thursday then may have a week or two of variant tournaments before beginning our next rated event.

As always, please let me know if there’s anything specific you’d like to see happen at the club (chess-related, preferably) and we’ll try to make it happen. Regards,

Mark Drury