tournament Archives - Page 3 of 13 - Menlo Park Chess Club

May 18, 2024May 22, 2024

Impromptu Blitz #16 Results

We enjoyed another excellent turnout for our Impromptu Blitz #16 Thursday, with some very strong players gracing our ranks and with Frisco Del Rosario, our reluctant blitz champion, once again claiming first place, this time in a tie with young Liam Liu at 4.5 out of 5 points. Pranav Jindal and Triet Vo tied for second at 4 points while Hayden Brongersma had another strong showing in sole 5th at 3.5. Thank you to everyone who joined us for this fun event!

We’ll hold another free blitz tournament this coming Thursday, May 23rd, likely with the same G/5;d2 time control, and the following week we’ll take our second foray into A4c chess with a tournament of three or four rounds. More information about that event and about the variant plus a registration link may be found here:

A4c Variant Tournament #2

More information and a registration link for our second A4c Variant Tournament

Please register ahead of time if you plan to play in this event, which typically helps us start closer to 7pm on tournament night. I hope to see many of you this Thursday and next! Regards,

Mark Drury

May 16, 2024May 16, 2024

Impromptu Blitz #15 Results

I meant to share the results from our previous impromptu blitz tournament sooner but had a very busy week this past—apologies for the delay. Per the wall chart below, Frisco Del Rosario enjoyed a perfect 5-0 score last Thursday, despite his open disdain for these faster time controls, while junior Hayden Brongersma managed sole second ahead of some stiff competition at 4-1 and David Zhao was alone in third with 3.5 points. Thank you to everyone who joined us for this tournament, as always!

Before last week’s tournament began Frisco gave a lecture on a Capablanca game from early in his career, one which ended with a number of sacrifices and a beautiful double-check mate. If you missed that lecture try to be at the club this evening round 6:30pm, when Frisco will review another Capa masterpiece—his justly famed rook ending against Tartakower from New York, 1924.

After Frisco’s lecture we’ll hold another G/5;d2 blitz tournament beginning round 7pm—I hope to see many of you this evening!

A4c Variant Tournament #2

Background: This will be our second foray into A4c Chess and it’s long overdue, given how well our first such event was received. One of the strongest blitz players in our club came up with this variant and, after hearing it described, we couldn’t resist holding an informal tournament to give it a try. It involves a good deal of fast chess plus a game within a game (a metagame) centered around how best to manage one’s fixed time allotment over several games.

Concept: Players will play best of 3 games against the same opponent in each round with 10 minutes on their clocks, with no increment or delay. When a game ends, players pause the clock but do not reset the time. They reset the pieces then restart the clock for the next game with the times remaining from the prior game(s). If a player runs out of time they lose the match. If a player wins the majority of the points possible in the 3 games, they win the match (so if a player wins two games and still has time remaining on their clock they win the match). One player gets two games with the white pieces (first and third games) and the other gets preferred clock side for all games.

Oddities: Clock location does not change so one player always keeps it on their preferred side. Typically the players start the game by drawing for colors then whomever wins the draw chooses White or Clockside, but given we’ll be holding a Swiss system tournament the player assigned White in any round gets two whites and the player assigned Black gets to choose clockside. (We could also allow the player who is assigned White by the pairing software to choose color preference or clockside to further complicate the metagame).

Comments: I like the metagame aspect of this format because it incentivizes players to manage their clock across multiple games with tactical decisions (whether it is burning down an opponent’s time when they are ahead on time or resigning quickly to preserve more time for subsequent games). It also allows a stronger slower player to manage their time differently and take more time to win the majority of games (though this is risky if they go into a third game after budgeting time poorly).

Format: As mentioned above, we will play best of 3 games at Gs/10 over three or possibly four rounds (no increment or delay), depending upon when we get started, and we may split players into groups of 4-8 by rating if the tournament doesn’t start very near 7pm (leaving time for just three rounds), so please arrive a little earlier if at all possible.

Casual, Blitz, Lecture, Ladder Chess Evening

Our regular weekly club meeting occurs Thursday evenings from 6:00-9:00pm in the Oak Room of the Arrillaga Family Recreation Center. Casual, blitz, bughouse and ladder chess games as well as a possible lecture are in the offing and we will also play another impromptu blitz tournament beginning at 7pm (free, no prizes), given there appears to be an appetite for same.

Casual, Blitz, Bughouse, Ladder Chess Evening

Our regular weekly club meeting occurs Thursday evenings from 6:00-9:00pm in the Oak Room of the Arrillaga Family Recreation Center. Casual, blitz, bughouse and ladder chess games are in the offing and we will also play another impromptu blitz tournament beginning at 7pm (free, no prizes), given there appears to be an appetite for same.

Casual, Blitz, Bughouse, Ladder Chess Evening

Our regular weekly club meeting occurs Thursday evenings from 6:00-9:00pm in the Oak Room of the Arrillaga Family Recreation Center. Casual, blitz, bughouse and ladder chess games are in the offing and we will also play another impromptu blitz tournament beginning at 7pm (free, no prizes), given there appears to be an appetite for same.

May 4, 2024May 5, 2024

Impromptu Blitz #14 Results

Twenty-three people participated in our Impromptu Blitz #14 tournament this past Thursday, a G/5;d2 affair which included four first-time visitors to the club—thank you again to Simon Rubinstein-Salzedo, Vin Armelin, Matt Kmiecik and Matt Mascioli for joining us in this event!

For perhaps the first time in one of our casual blitz tournaments we had a four-way tie for first at four out of five points, with Gabe, Kunal, Simon and Josen sharing top honors, while a raft of others tied for second at three points (juniors Max and Chase among them). We’ll hold another casual evening and blitz tournament this coming Thursday then may have a week or two of variant tournaments before beginning our next rated event.

As always, please let me know if there’s anything specific you’d like to see happen at the club (chess-related, preferably) and we’ll try to make it happen. Regards,

Mark Drury

April 26, 2024May 5, 2024

April Petite Swiss Final Results

Our three-round April Petite Swiss wrapped up last night with some very exciting games deciding first through third places in each section, as well as some interesting games which didn’t factor into the prizes, including my effort against Frisco Del Rosario wherein my already-shaky position crumbled dramatically in serious time trouble (I haven’t yet had time to analyze the game, Frisco, but am wondering if f6 instead of the more cavalier f5 might have prolonged things).

The full results are included in the attached image and of special note is the performance of Josen Kalra, who gained 80 and 121 points in his Regular and Quick ratings, respectively, with his tie for first in section one. The tournament has already been rated by US Chess—if you spot any errors please let me know and I will correct them immediately.

The winners and their earnings are given below—thank you to everyone who played in this event and we’ll hold another rated tournament beginning in late May or early June. Regards,

Mark Drury

Secton One:
1-3: Alexander Su, $33.33
1-3: Wentao Wu, $33.33
1-3: Josen Kalra, $33.33

Section Two:
1: Hayden Brongersma, $40
2: Banks Bennion, $25
3-4: Samuel Agdamag, $7.50
3-4: Amogh Rao, $7.50

Section Three:
1: Thomas Gerber, $50
2: Charles Mayville, $30
3-5: Jeffrey Ungar, $7
3-5: Andrew Yu, $7
3-5: Shlok Chowdhury, $7

April 13, 2024April 16, 2024

April Petite Swiss Round Two Results

Below are the round two results and round three pairings for our dual-rated G45;d5 Swiss in three sections. The third and final round will begin promptly at 7pm Thursday, April 25th, so please try to arrive at the Arrillaga Family Recreation Center by 6:50pm if at all possible. More details about this tournament may be found on the event page.

Section One

#	Name/Rating/ID	Rd 1	Rd 2	Rd 3	Total
1	Kathan Shukla	B 9	W 7	B 3
	1907 15808601	1.0	2.0		2.0
2	Alexander Su	B 8	W 3	B 4
	1999 12857329	1.0	1.5		1.5
3	Wentao Wu	W 6	B 2	W 1
	1935 16629782	1.0	1.5		1.5
4	Tobin Bennion	B 10	bye	W 2
	1770 12679573	1.0	1.5		1.5
5	Josen Kalra	B 7	W 9	B 6
	1600 12615210	0.5	1.5		1.5
6	Taewoo Kim	B 3	W 10	W 5
	1692 30622509	0.0	1.0		1.0
7	Frisco Del Rosario	W 5	B 1	W 8
	1900 10987792	0.5	0.5		0.5
8	Mark Drury	W 2	bye	B 7
	1734 12459313	0.0	0.5		0.5
9	Cesar Tamondong	W 1	B 5	W 10
	1610 12439091	0.0	0.0		0.0
10	David Zhao	W 4	B 6	B 9
	1543 14793784	0.0	0.0		0.0

Section Two

#	Name/Rating/ID	Rd 1	Rd 2	Rd 3	Total
1	Samuel Agdamag	B 7	W 4	B 2
	1458 14874734	1.0	2.0		2.0
2	Hayden Brongersma	B 5	W 7	W 1
	1118 31240441	1.0	2.0		2.0
3	Banks Bennion	B 6	bye	W 4
	1351 30175646	1.0	1.5		1.5
4	Leia Lin	W 8	B 1	B 3
	1453 17110828	1.0	1.0		1.0
5	Kornel Csernai	W 2	B 8	W 6
	1265 30594380	0.0	1.0		1.0
6	Amogh Rao	W 3	bye	B 5
	1166p 30949341	0.0	1.0		1.0
7	Atul Dhingra	W 1	B 2	bye
	1204p 31236322	0.0	0.0		0.0
8	Hugo Pu	B 4	W 5	bye
	1177 31093860	0.0	0.0		0.0

Section Three

#	Name/Rating/ID	Rd 1	Rd 2	Rd 3	Total
1	Jeffrey Ungar	B 6	W 4	B 2
	1063p 16396743	1.0	2.0		2.0
2	Thomas Gerber	W 7	B 5	W 1
	1061p 31647505	1.0	2.0		2.0
3	Charles Mayville	B 10	bye	W 5
	1012p 31640366	1.0	1.5		1.5
4	Brian Chen	W 9	B 1	W 7
	839p 31583753	1.0	1.0		1.0
5	Austin Chen	B 8	W 2	B 3
	820 31293249	1.0	1.0		1.0
6	Andrew Yu	W 1	B 9	W 8
	718 31364087	0.0	1.0		1.0
7	Shlok Chowdhury	B 2	W 10	B 4
	566 30627995	0.0	1.0		1.0
8	Neeraj Rao	W 5	bye	B 6
	1066 30789296	0.0	0.5		0.5
9	Maxime Gerber	B 4	W 6	B 10
	339p 31647554	0.0	0.0		0.0
10	Victor Chen	W 3	B 7	W 9
	265 30760848	0.0	0.0		0.0

April 3, 2024April 3, 2024

April Petite Swiss Round One Pairings

Below are the round one pairings for our dual-rated G45;d5 Swiss in three sections. The first round begins promptly at 7pm this Thursday, April 4th, so please try to arrive at the Arrillaga Family Recreation Center by 6:50pm if at all possible. More details about this tournament may be found on the event page.

SECTION ONE

#	Name/Rating/ID	Rd 1	Total
1	Alexander Su	B 6
	1999 12857329		0.0
2	Wentao Wu	W 7
	1935 16629782		0.0
3	Kathan Shukla	B 8
	1907 15808601		0.0
4	Frisco Del Rosario	W 9
	1900 10987792		0.0
5	Tobin Bennion	B 10
	1770 12679573		0.0
6	Mark Drury	W 1
	1734 12459313		0.0
7	Taewoo Kim	B 2
	1692 30622509		0.0
8	Cesar Tamondong	W 3
	1610 12439091		0.0
9	Josen Kalra	B 4
	1600 12615210		0.0
10	David Zhao	W 5
	1543 14793784		0.0

SECTION TWO

#	Name/Rating/ID	Rd 1	Total
1	Samuel Agdamag	B 5
	1458 14874734		0.0
2	Leia Lin	W 6
	1453 17110828		0.0
3	Banks Bennion	B 7
	1351 30175646		0.0
4	Kornel Csernai	W 8
	1265 30594380		0.0
5	Atul Dhingra	W 1
	1204p 31236322		0.0
6	Hugo Pu	B 2
	1177 31093860		0.0
7	Amogh Rao	W 3
	1166p 30949341		0.0
8	Hayden Brongersma	B 4
	1118 31240441		0.0

SECTION THREE

#	Name/Rating/ID	Rd 1	Total
1	Neeraj Rao	W 6
	1066 30789296		0.0
2	Jeffrey Ungar	B 7
	1063p 16396743		0.0
3	Thomas Gerber	W 8
	1061p 31647505		0.0
4	Charles Mayville	B 10
	1012p 31640366		0.0
5	Brian Chen	W 9
	839p 31583753		0.0
6	Austin Chen	B 1
	820 31293249		0.0
7	Andrew Yu	W 2
	718 31364087		0.0
8	Shlok Chowdhury	B 3
	566 30627995		0.0
9	Maxime Gerber	B 5
	339p 31647554		0.0
10	Victor Chen	W 4
	265 30760848		0.0