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.
Below are the final results with prizes for our August Double-Round Quick-Rated Quads and Swisses, which were again well received. Congratulations to all our winners and thank you once again to everyone who played in this event. Our next rated tournament, the 3rd club championship, will begin in mid-October and more information about that event will be shared here soon. Regards,
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!
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,
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).
I’m sharing the results from a couple of our recent impromptu blitz tournaments (attached images) and wanted to pass along that we’ll hold another free, unrated blitz tournament tomorrow evening beginning promptly at 7pm. Depending upon entries we may have one single section, as below, or we may break players into groups of 6, 8 or more to create more equitable sections. Please plan to arrive at the club by 6:30 to partake of Frisco’s excellent lecture before the tournament (last week’s explication of the mating pattern with king, bishop and knight versus king was a revelation to me and may be worth repeating soon).
Also, Chris Torres and I are trying to nail down the next rated club tournament, which could begin as early as August 1st, and I’ll share details here as soon as I have them. I hope to see many of you tomorrow, Thursday, evening! Regards,
Yet another late update for the previous week: we enjoyed an excellent lecture from Frisco Del Rosario then assayed a longer time control in our first impromptu slightly-longer-than-blitz event, a G/7;d2 affair with 18 people joining the fray, and with yours truly being treated most shamefully over the board, it must be said. Andy Applebaum once again claimed first with a perfect 4-0, while Pranav Jindal, Adam Ferrell and Venugopal Mani tied for second a full point behind (3-0); full results for this event are in the attached image. People appeared to approve of the time control but the general thinking is that G/5 or less with some small delay affords more rounds and less waiting between rounds, so we’ll likely return to the faster time controls for our impromptu tournaments.
Frisco will give another lecture this Thursday evening beginning at 6:30pm sharp then we’ll play another free, unrated blitz event beginning shortly after 7pm. As a reminder, there will be no club meeting July 4th, given it’s a national holiday and I believe the Arrillaga Center will be closed, and I will be out of town July 11th but Frisco offered to host the club that evening for a lecture, casual play and/or a thematic tournament. Thank you once again for all you are doing for the club, Frisco!
Just a quick note to share the results from our previous two informal tournaments, with the unrated quick event taking place on the 6th (congratulations to Andy Applebaum, Breakwell Loyalka, and Austin Chen for meting out perfect scores in their respective sections) and our impromptu blitz #18 occurring last week, with first-time visitor Ashwin Hebbar claiming sole first ahead of a stacked if smaller field (four masters and several near-masters), while Adam Ferrell sat alone in second, enjoying his best showing yet in one of these blitz affairs. We’ll hold another imformal blitz tournament tomorrow evening and the first couple people to arrive at the club will choose the time control. In other news, Olivia Smith ran away with the most recent Tuesday Night Marathon at the Mechanics Institute, landing 1.5 points clear of second-place finisher IM Elliot Winslow. Great result, Olivia! The full results and all the games may be found via the following links:
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.
Twenty-six worthies competed in our Impromptu Blitz #17 last Thursday, including two first-time visitors and one returning member (great to see you again, Nicholas!). When all five rounds of G/5;d2 action were said and done Andy Applebaum and Frisco Del Rosario unsurprisingly shared equal first at 4.5 points—well done to both players! It is passing strange how Frisco rails against blitz on occasion (to be fair, in a learning context) yet never manages worse than first place in these events. Hayden Brongersma nabbed sole third with 4.0, another excellent result and clearly a harbinger of first place finishes to come. Full results are in the attached image, thank you to everyone who participated in this tournament and our next impromptu blitz will occur June 27th, per the club schedule found here: https://menloparkchess.club/events/.
And beginning June 6th we will commence another double-round quick-rated event of three rounds/weeks in sections of 4, 6 or 8 players, depending upon ratings distributions. Two games against the same opponent will be played each evening, one as white and one as black using the G/15;d5 time control. There is a $10 entry fee for this US Chess-rated event and the entire amount will be returned in the prize fund. More details and a registration link may be found here: https://menloparkchess.club/event/june-double-round-quick-rated-quads-round-1/.
As always, please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions and I hope to see you at the A4c variant tournament this Thursday!
