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.
The Menlo Park Chess Club will hold a free, unrated 5-round blitz tournament with a G/5+0 time control in one section over one evening, April 27th, and the outcome of this event will determine the initial positions on the club’s blitz ladder (more details about the ladder and possible prizes associated with it over the course of the year will be shared soon). The first round begins promptly at 7pm, please check in at the club no later than 6:45pm!
Fourteen club stalwarts and six new visitors played in our first Bughouse Swiss tournament this past Thursday and the fact that Robert’s team claimed first prize with a perfect 4-0 was a surprise to no one, given his strength in this format. Robert’s teammate, John Vitlacil, and I go way back to the Burlingame Chess Club circa the late 1980s, where we played a number of tournament games against one another, so it was great to see him again after so many decades. We also had four or five first-time visitors who played casual and blitz chess Thursday, opting not to play in the tournament, which is always an option if you’re not a fan of any specific format or variant.
Congratulations are also due to teams Amogh / Pranav and newcomers Nirvan / Rachel for their second-place tie at 3 points, ahead of four teams with 2 points. For my part, I weighed poor Andres down with moves like 2. f4 in my game against Kornél, when his teammate, Jerome, extracted a pawn to drop on my f2 square with check, leading to a very quick, instructional and most embarrassing forced mate several moves later. I have no future in bughouse but I’ll continue playing it for the humor value, alone.
As much fun as this bughouse tournament was, I think we’ll forego the second such event scheduled for April 13th, given the format (chiefly the makeup of the teams) still needs some thought to make it appealing to a larger swath of our regular players. Please let me know if you have any feedback, good or bad, thanks to all of you who played in this event and we’ll most likely try the format again in the near future.
Twenty-two intrepid souls joined us for the Chess960 tournament Thursday night, one which morphed into an individual Swiss rather than a team event due to the number of relatively late entries. When the last flag fell two things were clear: we had, as a group, finally figured out how to castle (for the most part) and Josh Garrow is at least 3 inches taller and his chess skills are even stronger than when he visited us last summer. Congratulations to Josh on his perfect 4-0 score, to Quincy Chen for sole second with 3.5 points and to Chris Murphy, Jay Wacker, Jerome Oriel and Steven Swick on tying for third with 3.0 points!
As another reminder, the first of two bughouse tournaments occurs next Thursday and you have the option to choose your teammate (via the registration form or by contacting me) or to allow me to pick one for you from the pool of other individual entries. The first event is free to enter, given it will serve as a club trial for the format, and the following week we will hold the same event with a $5 entry fee per player, all of which will be returned in prizes. Enter one or both events at https://menloparkchess.club/events/ and I hope to see many of you for some bughouse over the coming two weeks! Regards,
The Menlo Park Chess Club will hold its first team Bughouse event April 6th, a follow-on to our Team Blitz tournament and part of a long-promised experiment to see if the team format works for our membership. The tournament will consist of sixteen teams of two players in a 4-round Swiss with a G/5 time control and free entry. More information about Bughouse rules and strategy may be found here.
Sign up individually using the Register button, above, and indicate your desired team member if you have one (optional). Given the fixed team nature of this event there is little flexibility where the number of participants is concerned, so if you wish to play please sign up early. That said, please do not register if you are on the fence about playing on the 6th, as nothing causes more swirl in a team event than late withdrawals or, worse, no-shows.
Shortly after registrations close team rosters and pairings will be shared with all participants. If you need to withdraw for any reason please let the tournament director know as soon as possible, so that a replacement player may be found and the teams rebalanced, as necessary. The first round will begin promptly at 7:00pm so please arrive by 6:45 Thursday to check in. Our Tournament Rules Summary will be followed for this tournament with the lone exception that we will observe clock move rather than touch move (the distinction will be shared before the start of the first round). Please send any questions or comments to info@menloparkchess.club and we look forward to seeing you at at this event!
The Menlo Park Chess Club will hold its first team Chess960 event March 30th, a follow-on to our Team Blitz on March 9th and part of a long-promised experiment to see if the team format works for our membership. The tournament will consist of eight teams of four players in a 3-round Swiss with a G/10 d/3 time control and free entry. The Chess960 starting positions to be used will be shared at the beginning of each round.
Sign up individually using the Register button, above, and teams will be crafted by the tournament director, with the avowed goal of making the event as equitable as possible where rating and/or skill level are concerned. Given the fixed team nature of this event there is little flexibility where the number of participants is concerned, so if you wish to play please sign up early. That said, please do not register if you are on the fence about playing on the 30th, as nothing causes more swirl in a team event than late withdrawals or, worse, no-shows.
Shortly after registrations close team rosters and pairings will be shared with all participants. If you need to withdraw for any reason please let the tournament director know as soon as possible, so that a replacement player may be found and the teams rebalanced, as necessary. The first round will begin promptly at 7:00pm so please arrive by 6:45 Thursday to check in. Our Tournament Rules Summary will be followed for this tournament with the lone exception that we will observe clock move rather than touch move (the distinction will be shared before the start of the first round). Please send any questions or comments to info@menloparkchess.club and we look forward to seeing you at at this event!
Our “Tower of Flints” team blitz tournament last night was an interesting and fun experiment with a few lessons learned (off the top of my head—there are certainly more): with assigned teams as were used in this event, have people on the same team introduce themselves to one another before the start of the first round, so everyone knows who is on their team (it was pointed out to me after the second round that there was some uncertainty about team makeup, resulting in a “Doh!” moment); balancing team strength is difficult when most participants don’t have an established blitz rating and there are a number of first-time participants; a five-round blitz tournament can take longer than 90 minutes, even with the pairings pre-made.
That said, I think the format has promise and I heard generally positive feedback from participants, so we’ll try it again next week or the week thereafter, perhaps playing Chess960 to further obfuscate my questionable team balancing algorithm. In the meantime, congratulations are due to Clyde Taylor and Gustavo Chau for winning their board groups with perfect 5-0 scores, and to Team E (Alex Chin, Andy Shih, Cameron Rampell, Atul Dhingra, Benjamin Sergeant and Clyde Taylor) for sweeping the other teams with a 5-0 match score, as well. All team and board results are in the images below and I’ll work out a better way to share this for the next event.
Thank you to everyone who played chess with us last night (including the many who visited for casual and bughouse), who put up with the missteps and who provided feedback during and after the tournament—I really appreciate it! Regards,
The Menlo Park Chess Club will hold two consecutive team blitz tournaments March 9th and 16th, part of a long-promised experiment to see if this format works for our membership. The first event on March 9th will offer free entry and will include either eight teams of 4 players (32), six teams of six players (36) or ten teams of four players (40), depending upon the number of registrations, with a bias for the middle option. The second event on March 16th may include a $5 entry fee, all of which will be returned to the top two or three teams as prizes. If there are six or eight teams the tournament format will be round robin (five or seven rounds, respectively). If there are ten teams the format will be a five-round Swiss. The time control is tentatively G/5 d/2 and may be slightly shorter if there are seven rounds (G/4 d/2).
Sign up individually using the Register button, above, and teams will be crafted using a patent-pending, proprietary algorithm known only to ChatGPT, with the avowed goal of making the event as equitable as possible where rating and/or skill level are concerned. Given the fixed team nature of this event there is little flexibility where the number of participants is concerned, so if you wish to play please sign up early. That said, please do not sign up if you are on the fence about playing next Thursday, as nothing causes more swirl in a team event than late withdrawals or, worse, no-shows.
Shortly after registrations close team rosters and pairings will be shared with all participants. If you need to withdraw for any reason please let the tournament director know as soon as possible, so that a replacement player may be found and the teams rebalanced, as necessary. The first round will begin promptly at 7:00pm so please arrive by 6:45 Thursday to check in. The US Chess Rules of Blitz Chess will be followed for both events with the lone exception that we will observe clock move rather than touch move (the distinction will be shared before the start of the first round). Please send any questions or comments to info@menloparkchess.club and we look forward to seeing you at one or both of these events!
The Menlo Park Chess Club will hold the first of perhaps two consecutive team blitz tournaments, one the week of March 9th and another on March 16th, something of an experiment to see if the format works for our membership. Depending upon the number of entries, we’ll have eight teams of four players (32), six teams of six players (36) or ten teams of four players (40). If there are six or eight teams the format will be round robin, with each team playing every other team; if ten teams we will likely hold a Swiss system tournament of five rounds. The time control will be G/5 d/2 if there are six or ten teams (five rounds), G/4 d/2 if eight teams (seven rounds).
Entry is free for this first tournament, in case there are things which don’t go quite right, with a $5 entry fee planned for the second event (March 16th), one that will make for a reasonable prize fund for the winning team. Everyone will enter individually via the button above and Mark Drury will create the teams based upon a patent-pending, proprietary algorithm known only to him and to ChatGPT. Teams will be announced a day or two before the event and it is hoped that players will notify the tournament director as soon as possible if they need withdraw for any reason, so that teams may be rebalanced as necessary. The tournament will begin promptly at 7pm so please arrive by 6:45 to check in.
Note that, given the team nature of this event, we can only register a certain number of players, so if you try to enter late you may find registrations are closed. That said, please do not register if you are on the fence about playing in the event–late withdrawals or, worse, no-shows are a serious pain in team tournaments such as this. We will follow the US Chess Rules for Blitz Chess for this event, with the lone exception that we’ll be using clock instead of touch move (we’ll explain the distinction before the tournament starts).
Please direct any questions or comments to info@menloparkchess.club and we hope to see you on March 9th and 16th!
We held our first blitz tournament of the year last night with 28 players participating in two sections. Section A, an 8-player round robin, was won by FM Shawnak Shivakumar with the statement score of 6.5 out of 7 points. Adithya Karavadi took second with 5 points and Alaric Stein rounded out the top three of this hard-fought group with 4.5 points.
Newcomer Samuel Agdamag won Section B, a 5-round Swiss event, with a score of 4.5 points, while Jörg Lamprecht, Kornél Csernaiand youthful Sahil Shivakumar tied for second with 4 points each. Congratulations to our winners—Shawnak and Samuel took home $25 Kepler’s Books gift certificates for their efforts—and thank you to everyone who joined us last night (including our five first-time visitors)!
I’ll send information later today or tomorrow about the USCF-rated tournament which begins next Thursday, a 4-round Swiss event in one section with a G/45 d/5 time control, and I hope many of you will be able to join us then. Regards,
