Category: Uncategorized

We saw some exciting chess Thursday evening (and more than a few swindles) during the third and fourth rounds of our August Double-Round Quick-Rated Quads and Swisses, per the images below. Most of the group results are fairly even thus far, as was the hope given the tighter ratings distributions in these smaller sections, with the possible exception of young Austin Chen, who is pwning his Swiss two-thirds of the way through. We’ll play rounds five and six next Thursday then will hold a make-up round August 29th, for the one or two matches still outstanding. I will submit the sections for rating no later than Friday, August 30th. Once again, thank you to everyone who joined us for this fun event!

Twenty-two people participated in three sections of our second A4c Variant tournament this past Thursday, a three-round best-of-3-games-in-10-total-minutes affair which was again rife with surprises and a few upsets. When the final time scramble settled Yash Shah and Joey Lo reigned supreme over sections one and three, respectively, with perfect scores while youngsters Austin Chen and Hugo Pu shared first in section two with 2.5 points. Hugo had an interesting match in round two against Benjamin Chen wherein they split the first two games but Benjamin was left with a scant 13 seconds in the deciding third, and despite some very fast moves he succumbed on time, highlighting the game within a game aspect of this format, while in section one Andy Applebaum and Pranav Jindal split their first two games and drew the third in their round 2 encounter, securing one of just two drawn matches during the night.

Feedback about this variant was again positive (well, there was one half-hearted detractor but he bemoans all faster time controls) so we’ll hold another A4c tournament again soon, and thank you to everyone who joined us for this event.

In other tournament news, we have nine registrations for our double-round quick-rated event scheduled to begin this Thursday, which is insufficient for a number of reasons so I plan to cancel it, regrettably. Perhaps people are traveling in June and cannot commit to all three weeks, or they don’t like the double-round format or the faster quick-rated time control or I simply didn’t promote the event as much as I have others in the past. We typically end up with a waiting list for similar tournaments but there was clearly no risk of that this time around, so I’ll try to understand if this format doesn’t work for most of you (or if the timing was simply bad).

This Thursday we will likely hold free, unrated G/10;d3 Swiss sections of 6-8 players over three rounds, somewhat like last week but we’ll play just one game in that time control. If you’d like to play in that event please try to arrive at the club round 6:45 so we can begin the tournament at 7pm. Better yet, arrive shortly before 6:30 in case Frisco Del Rosario has another lecture on tap for us–if you’ve missed these in the past I highly recommend attending as Frisco’s chess insights are eminently worth your time.

We had another full house (and a considerable wait list—register early!) for our quick-rated, double-round quads plus Swiss which ran from August 10th – 24th, with clear winners in all sections save Quad 1, wherein Andy Applebaum and Pranav Jindal tied for 1st-2nd with 4 points apiece out of 6. Tobin Bennion took sole first in Quad 2 with 4.5 points while David Zhao had the only perfect score in the event with his impressive 6-0 in Quad 3. Kornel Csernai also tallied 4.5 to win Quad 4 and Umar Rasyid had perhaps our best junior showing with his excellent 5 points to take Quad 5.

Quad 6 was dangerously close to seeing a 4-way tie at 3 points until Michael Darr bested six-year-old phenom Rosalyn Chu (remember that name) in their final game to win outright with 4 points. In the Swiss event, Travis Torres-O’Callaghan, the front runner after four rounds, became ill and was unable to play rounds 5 and 6, regrettably, leaving Austin Chen and Victor Chen to square off atop that section. Austin prevailed over both games and claimed 1st with an admirable 5 points. The full results for this event may be found here.

Thank you to everyone who played in this fun event, please let me know if you have any feedback (good or bad) and congratulations to all of our prize winners–their winnings are given below and I’ll reach out to individuals via email about how they wish to be paid. Regards,

Mark Drury

Vlae Kershner of Climate Magazine in Redwood City visited the club several times, played in one of our blitz tournaments and wrote a very nice article about what we are doing and about chess in general, one which may be read via the link below. Thank you for joining us, Vlae, and we hope to see you at the club again soon!