Our regular weekly club meeting occurs Thursday evenings from 6:00-9:45pm in the Oak Room of the Arrillaga Family Recreation Center. Casual, blitz, bughouse and ladder chess games are in the offing and we’ll discuss details of the next tournament, tentatively scheduled for August 10th. We may also hold another impromptu blitz tournament this evening, interest permitting.
Casual, Blitz, Bughouse, Ladder Chess Evening
Our regular weekly club meeting occurs Thursday evenings from 6:00-9:45pm in the Oak Room of the Arrillaga Family Recreation Center. Casual, blitz, bughouse and ladder chess games are in the offing and we’ll discuss details of the next tournament, tentatively scheduled for early August. Note that Mark Drury won’t attend this week so new visitors may wish to arrive round 7pm to give other club members time to set up for the evening. Please bring your own boards, sets and clocks if you have them.
Casual, Blitz, Bughouse, Ladder Chess Evening
Our regular weekly club meeting occurs Thursday evenings from 6:00-9:45pm in the Oak Room of the Arrillaga Family Recreation Center. Casual, blitz, bughouse and ladder chess games are in the offing and we’ll discuss details of the next tournament, tentatively scheduled for early August. Note that Mark Drury won’t attend this week so new visitors may wish to arrive round 7pm to give other club members time to set up for the evening. Please bring your own boards, sets and clocks if you have them.
Casual, Blitz, Bughouse, Ladder Chess Evening
Our regular weekly club meeting occurs Thursday evenings from 6:00-9:45pm in the Oak Room of the Arrillaga Family Recreation Center. Casual, blitz, bughouse and ladder chess games are in the offing and we’ll discuss details of the next tournament, tentatively scheduled for early August.
Casual, Blitz, Bughouse, Ladder Chess Evening
Our regular weekly club meeting occurs Thursday evenings from 6:00-9:45pm in the Oak Room of the Arrillaga Family Recreation Center. Casual, blitz, bughouse and ladder chess games are in the offing and we’ll discuss details of the next tournament, tentatively scheduled for early August.
Casual, Blitz, Bughouse, Ladder Chess Evening
Our regular weekly club meeting occurs Thursday evenings from 6:00-9:45pm in the Oak Room of the Arrillaga Family Recreation Center. Casual, blitz, bughouse and ladder chess games are in the offing and we’ll discuss details of the next tournament, tentatively scheduled for June 15th.
Casual, Blitz, Bughouse, Ladder Chess Evening
Our regular weekly club meeting occurs Thursday evenings from 6:00-9:45pm in the Oak Room of the Arrillaga Family Recreation Center. Casual, blitz, bughouse and ladder chess games are in the offing and we’ll discuss details of the next tournament, tentatively scheduled for mid-June.
Casual, Blitz, Bughouse Chess Evening
Our regular weekly club meeting occurs Thursday evenings from 6:00-9:45pm in the Oak Room of the Arrillaga Family Recreation Center. Casual, blitz and bughouse chess are in the offing and we’ll discuss details of the next tournament, tentatively scheduled for early June.
Raphael Yelluas Memorial Blitz
The Raphael Yelluas Memorial Blitz event held last night at the Kolty Chess Club was a great success, with a very large turnout split into two sections, 1600+ and U1600. The Menlo Park club was well represented and saw excellent results from the likes of Cesar, Adam, Kunal, Marshall, Nicholas, Samuel, Ashwin, Alex Chin, Shahin Aghevli, Josen Kalra, Michael Ho and certainly others I’m forgetting at present.
I don’t have the official results but I believe IM Grisha Kotlyar and CM Badamkhand Norovsambuu tied for first in the 1600+ section, while Menlo Park Chess Club stalwarts Nicholas Tan and Samuel Agdamag shared first in the U1600 section, after an exciting final-round draw between the two (both undefeated to that point!).
The photos below are from the first round, with Cesar and Badamkhand squaring off on board two while I had the pleasure of playing Grisha on board one. We began an interesting Dutch game of a dozen or so moves until I may have been on the verge of losing a pawn or some positional concession but instead opted to boldly hang my queen, from which auspicious start I never left the bottom boards for the rest of the night. Grisha was gracious in victory, however, and may visit our club at some point to play blitz with members and/or give a lecture of some kind.
A big thank you to Wolfgang Behm, George Jeffers, Carl Lumma, Grisha Kotlyar and all the other Kolty Chess Club Players who made this happen—it was a great event!
Mad Hatter Ladder Blitz Swiss Results
We enjoyed another full house Thursday night, April 27th, for our Mad Hatter Ladder Blitz Swiss, with perhaps eight people playing in their first over-the-board event. I didn’t do justice to the name of this tournament, given I had five different Mad Hatter-worthy variations prepared for each of the five rounds, but in reading the room we went with straight-up chess and I think that was the right call (we may partake of those variations later this year).
Kunal enjoyed another perfect result with his 5-0 score, one point ahead of second-place finishers Alex, Pranav, Adam, Amós and Kornél (who is likely the world’s strongest Class D player). The tournament started just a few minutes after 7pm and finished round 8:30, so a huge thank you to everyone for checking in early, as requested, and for joining us last night!
As a reminder, the club will soon host ladders for blitz and slower games and last night’s event was the seed tournament for our blitz ladder. I’ll create a page on the website for the ladder and will include the rules on that page, but the thinking is we’ll offer some nice prizes for those who are most active (or some similar criteria) on the ladder over the remainder of the year. More details about that will follow soon.
