Twenty people joined us last night for a Swiss G/3+2 blitz tournament of five rounds, including several first-time visitors, among them first-place finisher Kunal Modi, who was a perfect 5 for 5 even though he faced stiff competition in Shahin Aghevli (2nd), Karim Seada (3rd) and a host of strong players tied for 4th at 3 points. Congratulations to Kunal, Shahin and Karim and thank you to everyone who played in this event!
We’ll hold another blitz event next week to close out the year (the club won’t meet December 21st or 28th), either another single-section Swiss tourney or 4- or 6-player round robins, depending upon turnout, with Kepler’s Books gift certificates serving as prizes. I’ll send an event invite for that tournament later today. Regards,
We’ll hold a casual 5-round G/3+2 blitz tournament as something of a warmup for our club’s blitz championship, to occur the following Wednesday, December 14th. Tomorrow’s event will either be one single Swiss section or, depending upon turnout, we may hold 6-person round robins based on rating (or some estimation thereof). We’ll begin “promptly” at 7:15pm so please show up no later than 7:00 if you plan to play in this event. There should also be people on hand for informal or other non-tournament games.
Our regular weekly club meeting occurs Wednesday evenings from 6:00-9:45pm in the Cypress Room of the Arrillaga Family Recreation Center. Casual, blitz and bughouse chess are in the offing and we’ll discuss details of the next blitz tournament, tentatively scheduled for December 7th.
Yesterday evening we held a four-round double blitz G/3+2 tournament and twenty-nine people participated. In this particular event two games were contested in each round, one as white and one as black with the same opponent, which is relatively uncommon in Swiss system tournaments.
After three rounds no less than nine players had a reasonable chance at a prize, but after the dramatic fourth round concluded WFM Olivia Smith claimed sole first place with seven out of eight points and took home the $30 Kepler’s Books gift certificate.
The tie for second between blitz mavens Pranav Jindal, Alaric Stein and Andy Shih, each with 6.5 points, resulted in not one but two G/3+0 round robin playoffs for the remaining prizes, given the first ended in yet another three-way tie. Would that we had recorded these games as there was some very interesting chess, no matter the time control, including wild swings of fortune in a single game. Pranav proved victorious in the second playoff and collected the $20 gift certificate while Alaric pocketed $10 (Andy received a firm consolation handshake).
Blitz tournaments clearly bring the crowds to our club so we’ll continue holding at least one of these each month as our schedule and interest allow. As always, please let me know if you have suggestions for other chess activities and I hope to see you at the club soon!
Eighteen brave souls took part in our four-round Fischer Random/Chess960 tournament this past Wednesday, with Alaric Stein cooly claiming yet another first place in club events and taking the $20 Feldman’s Books gift certificate with a perfect score. Pranav Jindal, Adam Stevens, Alexander Su and Adithya Karavadi tied for second with three points apiece and, after a tense G/3+0 blitz playoff, Adam won the $15 second prize gift certificate and Adithya the $10 third.
Everyone appeared to enjoy this event, even with pieces hanging left and right, so we may try the variant again soon if people wish to do so. The starting positions for each round are listed in the image, below, please let me know if you have any questions about this tournament and a hearty “thank you!” to everyone who participated.
Our regular weekly club meeting occurs Wednesday evenings from 6:00-9:45pm in the Cypress Room of the Arrillaga Family Recreation Center. Casual, blitz and bughouse chess are in the offing and we’ll discuss details of the Chess960 tournament tentatively scheduled for September 14th.
Our regular weekly club meeting occurs Wednesday evenings from 6:00-9:45pm in the Cypress Room of the Arrillaga Family Recreation Center. Casual, blitz and bughouse chess are in the offing and we’ll discuss details of the Chess960 tournament tentatively scheduled for September 14th.
One way to summarize Wednesday’s final installment of our Surfeit of Blitz Marathon, the 5-round G/3+0 tournament, is simply: Bada venit, Bada vidit, Bada vicit! Badamkhand Norovsambuu scored 4.5 out of 5 points for clear first place, ceding a single draw to her friend Saikhanchimeg Tsogtsaikhan, another very strong expert-level player and a first-time visitor to the club (and by “strong” we’re talking clear first with a perfect 5-0 score in the 2018 US Women’s Open, over a number of titled players—Badamkhand won the same event this year!). Alaric, Pranav, Kathan and Shahin shared 2nd place with 4 points, while Shawnak and Josh shared Under-17 1st place with 3 points.
Alaric outlasted all others in our Surfeit of Blitz Marathon, taking first place with 15 out of 18 points over four tournaments. Pranav had the only perfect score after four rounds in the G/3+0 last night and could have joined Alaric atop the marathon with a last-round win, but Badamkhand wasn’t having it, so he and Shahin shared 2nd place with 14 points, while Kathan took sole 4th with 13. The Under-17 marathon saw a tie for 1st place, with Ethan and Josh both scoring 8 points after playing in just three of the four events. The final results for the G/3+0 event and the overall marathon are in the attached images, while the marathon prizes are given below—I’ll follow up individually to ask how people wish to be paid. Congratulations to all our winners and a hearty thank you to everyone who played in this fun if eccentric event!
Blitz chess is clearly very popular with the club, given we had 63 people participate in the marathon, so we’ll do something similar again before the end of the year. I may miss the coming two Wednesdays but the club will still meet for casual and blitz chess August 3rd and 10th, and we’ll consider holding another USCF-rated event in September. As always, if you have suggestions for club activities or tournaments please let me know.
Our Surfeit of Blitz G/3+2 event was contested last night with quite a few new people joining the fray, including FM-elect Shawnak Shivakumar, who went 5-0 to take sole first place and the $25 prize. Five people were one point back, including newcomer Badamkhand Norovsambuu, a strong expert-level player, and Ethan Mei, who took home the U17 $15 first prize and a commanding lead in the U17 marathon standings. Cameron Rampell and Sahil Shivakumar shared second U17 honors with excellent 3-2 scores (Shawnak is U17, as well, but no longer needs trifle with age group prizes).
The attached images give the full results for last night’s event as well as the current marathon standings. I pulled these together rather quickly late last night so please let me know if you see any errors. Given second-place ties in the Open and U17 groups, $25 and $10 will be added to the respective marathon prizes as follows:
Next week is the final G/3+0 event of our Surfeit of Blitz Marathon and, given Alaric’s stated affinity for the time control, odds are he’ll share in the top prize (if not win it outright). But if we’re graced with a few more strong wildcards like Shawnak and Badamkhand the final result may be far less clear. Should be entertaining, regardless, and please register online asap if you plan to play next week.
Well, there is clearly demand for blitz at the club, at least for the “slower” G/5+3 time control used last night. Forty-one people turned out for the first installment of our Surfeit of Blitz Marathon, which is perhaps twenty-one more than we were expecting, and we filled both playing rooms plus had one board in our skittles room. It was great to have so many players join us and the fact that ~90% registered online before the event made things that much easier and smoother–thank you all for taking the few seconds to do that!
Per the wall chart below, Richard, Pranav and Sean tied for first place with perfect scores, while eight others were close behind with 3 points out of 4. Joshua Garrow took the Under-17 first prize ($15) with 3 points and Raajas Dixit took second ($10) with 2.5. Given there were no ties for prizes in the U17 division last night no prize money will roll over to the U17 marathon fund this week (the blue cells in the wall chart show juniors vying for marathon prizes).
The three-way tie for first in our Open division, however, means all $50 of last night’s prizes ($25, $15, $10) will be rolled into the marathon prize fund, as promised/hoped for. At present we have ten people vying for marathon prizes (gold cells in the wall chart), so at $5/person the initial marathon prizes would have been $25, $15 and $10, but with last night’s $50 infusion we now have $35, $25, $20, $15, $5 (somewhat arbitrary, I realize). I expect the same infusion to happen next week, given it’s another 4-round event.
Note that if you thought you entered the marathon and don’t see your name highlighted in gold or blue, below, please let me know. We will also give people one more opportunity to enter the marathon before the start of next week’s first round. Again, thank you all for playing last night and I hope you enjoyed the evening as much as I did!
