Tag: freestyle

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Freestyle Chess with Draft #2 Results

Well, the inevitable happened last week when ten-year-old Austin Chen (I think he’s but ten) tied for first place with Breakwell Loyalka in our five-round Freestyle Chess with Draft tournament, one with a relatively short (for the variant) G/5;d3 time control. Austin and Breakwell played some nice games en route to their 4.5 out of 5 scores, with Austin grinding down both me and Sanat Singhal in what were likely drawn rook and pawn endgames while Breakwell won a wild final-round game against WFM Olivia Smith. Olivia, Hugo Pu and Raghav Ramesh tied for third with 3.5 points. The full results are in the attached image and thank you to everyone who joined us for this fun variant tournament.

This Thursday we’ll hold yet another casual evening with a lecture at 6:30pm followed by a free, unrated blitz tournament round 7pm. Also, we will proceed with our autumn quick-rated quads beginning September 25th so if you wish to play and have not yet registered for that event please do so asap here. Regards,

Mark Drury

Freestyle Chess (Chess960) Draft Tournament

A number of people have requested that we revisit Chess960 or, as it’s now styled, Freestyle Chess in another casual tournament so that’s exactly what we’ll do in this event, again using a piece placement draft with the following format and rules:

  • There will likely be 4 or 5 Swiss rounds at G/5;d3 in one or two sections
  • Registration will occur onsite–please try to arrive by 6:45pm
  • The games will be played with the normal Freestyle/Chess960 rules except for the use of a draft, wherein white starts black’s clock then black places the first piece on the back rank and starts white’s clock, white copies that move then places another piece of their own, black copies that placement then places a third piece, etc., until black places a final piece and white makes the first chess move of the game
  • It’s important to note that the draft phase covered above occurs while players’ clocks are running, just as in normal moves for the game
  • The king must be placed between the two rooks as in normal Freestyle/Chess960
  • More information about castling may be found in chess.com tutorials here and here
  • The bishops must be placed on opposite-colored squares
  • We will use clock move rather than touch move, as in our blitz tournaments
  • An illegal move pointed out by an opponent (no one else) immediately ends the game as a loss for the player who made the illegal move