To Honor And Reflect

The Metrowest Chess Club has been around for 25+ years now, and during its early years the club had its obligatory club champions. But the process was quite informal and in some cases the legitimacy of a club champion was questioned by the membership. There were no formal processes in place to govern an undisputed club championship event and eventually the club dropped the idea of having a club champion.

Move the clock ahead to 2003. The club had reinvented itself, designating various program positions within the organization. It was at this time, when the club’s Tournament Director, Jim Krycka, took it upon himself to put into motion a solid format to govern a Club Championship and thus bring legitimacy to the “crowning” of a Club Champion.

Since that time, the club has crowned three distinct Club Champions: GM Alexander Ivanov, IM Igor Foygel and NM Denys Shmelov.

I believe the club does a fantastic job of organizing and putting to affect a great championship event. They work hard to make the invitational event special and prestigious with little things like special name tags with the player's photo, money and a dedicated write up to the club's newsletter.

One idea that I would like to put forward on the table would be to provide some sort of means to help solidify the recognition that is due to a newly minted Club Champion. Something that is permanent and seals the recognition in a historical sense.

By providing something permanent, we enable our future club champions the ability to reflect upon and recall the glory of such an achievement. There could be the possibility of plaques or wall hangings at the club to honor our club champions. With a permenant designation on display, we bring about a little more vitality, a credible history and an ability to reflect. Both for the club and for the club champion.

For my part, I am still in the process of retrieving records of those games played from our most recent club championship event. I believe that the preservation and recording of these games into the club's archive directory is one of many key elements necessary in maintaining a historical perspective of club championships and adding an enduring legacy vital to the club's perseverance.

Going forward, I would like to persuade the membership in providing a “Certificate of Excellence” or achievement for our current and future club champions to be.

All just ideas right now; but in any case, for my part, in recognition of MCC Club Champions, past and present, I plan to present a 3 part series in honor of our champions in future blogs to come, so stay tuned.

A Blog's Worth

Why do we blog? Of course, there are several answers to this question, but one common theme; our passion to speak publicly about the things we love or concern us.

Now, obviously I love chess and am very passionate about the game. I believe I have the necessary skills to communicate this passion publicly and through a medium such as this. So here I am blogging about the game I love.

But, what good is a blog if you can’t trigger new readership and build up a following of faithful readers? There is no good at all, you need to have the ability to at least maintain some sort of faithful readership, otherwise your blog is just lost out there in a multitude of e-clouds.

So, how do we trigger readership to initiate a following? Blog…blog and blog! You have to blog consistently and to some sort of time mechanism. Moreover, your blog should carry on common themes of discussions and/or interests. A mixed bag of interests and personal observations do well as long as the reader can identify in you, the blogger, a common trait, principle or interest. Otherwise, your readers will eventually jump ship.

You say consistency eh? Yea…it has to be that way; or the effort (or lack of) you put into blogging fails. A good consistency rate for blogging successfully varies, but you should at least maintain a monthly post minimally to assure readers of your blog that fresh material is on the way witihn a dependable time frame.

Personally, I shoot for two posts a month; anything more is just pure bonus material for my readers. If there comes a time where I begin to fail by providing fresh material on a monthly basis, then it will be time to retire the blog or at the very least notify my readers that I will be entering a state of inactivity and to watch for a return at such and such a time.

Yes, I know, we get busy; we have work, travel, friends, family etc. But truth be told, engaging in your passions is necessary in keeping a healthy, successful and happy life. It is those passions that peak interest in us from others that makes their world colorful and inviting. If you decide to blog about your passion, finding a few minutes over the course of a month to write about it shouldn’t be an inconvenience, it should be satisfying.

Supporting Local Chess: WCC

Waltham Chess Club Wants You!

The Waltham Chess Club is looking for chess players to come join them on Friday Nights. The club is located at 404 Wyman St. in Waltham Massachusetts and their doors are open to the public at 7:00pm. Rounds usually begin around 7:30pm.

So, if you're a chess enthusiast, pro or beginner, come on down and support your local chess club. You can visit them here at www.walthamchessclub.org. Tell them Smitty sent you.

And per the request of organizers at the Waltham Chess Club, this blog will now support a link to their site.

Proverbs

No one rejoices more in revenge than a chess player vexed by the over confident King sitting opposite him.
~ Warner Smith

What looks like an hourglass? Alex.

With a new month comes a new tourney at the local club (Metrowest Chess Club), and for the month of June it is appropriately named the “MCC Summer Solstice Swiss”. Because the club generally attracts 80+ players in a given month, we cater to a standard of 4 section breaks: Open, U2000, U1600 and U1400.

Our third tier section (U1600) fluctuates from month to month between a U1600 break to a U1700 break. Those months where the section break is set to U1700, player participation in this section goes up versus when the section is set to U1600, but at the cost of player participation in the U2000 section, albeit not too much.

Lately our sections look like an hourglass, our top and bottom sections have been “heavy”, whereas our middle two sections fluctuate between medium to light player participation dependent on the 3rd tier’s break.

As for our bottom tier, the reason for such heavy participation is due to a continuous growth of new players to the club on a monthly basis and the lack of player turnaround, i.e. loss of players. Our new players are sticking around and that is good, but not enough of our U1400 players are improving in a timely fashion or getting up the courage to move up a section to offset this particular section’s growth rate.

And, to illustrate recent section breakdowns, here are some numbers:

MCC Swiss w/ U1600 Section

Open Section: 22 players
U200 Section: 17 players
U1600 Section: 8 players
U1400 Section: 26 players

MCC Swiss w/ U1700 Section

Open Section: 22 players
U2000 Section: 15 players
U1700 Section: 15 players
U1400 Section: 25 players

This trend has been somewhat consistent of late and would appear that when our section break for our third tier is set to U1700, player participation among the sections are more evenly dispersed versus when the tier break is set to U1600.

My current thoughts to remedy this trend would be to either keep the section breaks static right now with the third tier break staying at U1700 or if we are to stay with a flux tier model then that flux should apply to both bottom tiers. When we have a U1700 break, our lowest tier will break at U1400, but when we have a U1600 tier; our bottom tier should break at U1300.

I like the flux model and I think that if we impose a flux break for our lowest tier, it will actually help some of our lower rated players improve at a faster rate, exposing them to the better play of higher rated players.

Reviewing the 78th Massachusetts Open

This traditional MACA event was held at the Holiday Inn in Boxborough MA over Memorial weekend. And I must say, with great success! Over the last several years, I have noticed a severe decrease of participants playing in the Massachusetts Open; not this year. There was success written all over the place, from the playing hall to the main corridor just outside the hall, chess players, young and old, mingled about talking of their games, playing bug-house on the floor and just buzzing around with jargon only understood by fellow chess players. It was just good to see, but good for MACA too. They needed a successful tournament beyond the bread and butter of pure scholastic medicine.

But what makes me most thrilled about the success of this tournament was the evidence that chess still lives among the adult population despite recent indicators of a decline in adult chess players over the age of 25. MACA provided the full gambit; a three day six round event, a one day 4 round event, blitz tournament, scholastics tournament and prize money for submitted games that had the most interesting and convincing win. I offer my congratulations and sincere gratitude to the folks of MACA, who made this tournament possible and successful; especially to the TD’s, who got their hands dirty and provided a smooth tournament.

As for the hosting site, you can’t ask for a better location and setting for the money. Hopefully, the Holiday Inn was able to benefit from such a wonderful turn out, as this would only favor the chess community and MACA for future events.

Now, let’s get to the over the board results. I enrolled in the 3-day event U1600 Section and finished 3.0/6. Meh…I know I am better than what the results provided and I am not going to take anything away from my opponents by providing excuses. I do have my reasons for not playing at the level I’m capable of, but the same could be said for a lot of players. But to provide some evidence, I will say that my wins came at the hands of one whom placed 2nd in our section and one whom was the top rated player in our section.

Round One:
I draw Black and am paired up against Ramasay Subramani, a young man from the state of Washington. His play is much stronger than his advanced class D rating would suggest and made evident from his final results 4-2 in the U1600 section. This particular game I played the Sicilian Najdorf variation where White plays the non-confrontational 7.Be2.

This game was the longest game I’ve ever played during my chess career at over 5 hours and 12 minutes to complete. The end game came down to a Rook-Bishop for Black vs. Bishop-Pawn for White on move ...60. White made me play out the mate, so I did…nineteen moves later.

It was a good win, but it came at a cost. It was mentally and physically exhausting and would haunt me the rest of the tournament. Subramani went on to place second at this tournament.

Round Two:
Playing White this round, I am paired up against a lower 1400 rated player named Jeffery Wright. I’ve seen Jeff at the local club from time to time mingling about watching the masters play, but I’ve never seen him actually play at the club.

In this game I go into the KIA against a reverse French Defense, which is usually the case with players wanting to play the Alekhine Defense against 1.e4 only to realize that I won’t even entertain it with 2.d3. Anyway, the opening was well played out, but my concentration was just not there going into the later stages of the game; I only had a half-hour break since playing my last marathon game and that game was still pressing on the mind.

Jeffery was able to open up my c-file and load up the cannon against an un-coordinated defense, and eventually ripped open my center pawn structure. I was in no mood for another long played out game, especially being down material, so I resigned early. Jeffery, like my first opponent, went on to place 2nd in this tournament.

Round Three:
The following morning I am paired against Pierre Fleurant, a fellow club player who has just recently broke out of the U1400 section and is gradually increasing in playing strength. Pierre is a methodical and deliberate player, using his time wisely. All good qualities that will serve him well as he moves up to greener pastures with stronger players.

Once again, I go into the Sicilian Najdorf against White’s English Attack, but I’m playing the opening on auto- pilot and am more interested in my IPOD than the game itself. My ignorance and lack of concentration on the game drops a piece immediately to my opponent on move 10.

At this point, I’m cursing my opponent from round one…blaming him for my own failures; its becoming a mental game with me. Well, anyway, after I lost my Bishop, I was determined to give my opponent a better game and rolled up the sleeves. Eventually, I did regain some material, but not enough to equalize the game and to my opponents credit he finished off the game with a nice mating combination.

Round Four:
By now, I’m frustrated with my game play. I just can’t seem to let go of round one, and even though I won that round it just destroyed my psyche for some unknown reason. I just didn’t have the mo-jo going and was dreading playing another game; I was considering withdrawing at this point.

But, I stuck it out and drew Robert Ernest King who ended up playing the Sicilian against me with an accelerated move of 5…e5. During this game I was up material and liked my position over Black’s, but somewhere down the road, I just didn’t follow my instincts and played a rather off-tempo move allowing my opponent to sneak in the back door and earn a perpetual check against my King. This game ended in a draw.

I left the day down and out and upset with my play. I was fighting a psychological war with my own mental state of well being and questioning my own potential as a chess player. Later in the evening, my wife encouraged me with positive feedback, reminding me that I had been down this road once before and pulled out of it like a champ; then went on to blast me for not getting a good breakfast in me before the games.

The next morning, I awoke in a good mood and in a fresh mental state. I had finally let go of the last two days of miserable chess and sat down for breakfast.

Round Five:
This would be my final round as I had put in for a bye on round six. I went into this game reinvigorated and was hoping to draw a strong opponent. My wish came true as I drew the top rated player in our section, a man from central Massachusetts by the name of Eduardo Valadares.

For the third time, I played the Sicilian Najdorf, and boy did I ever play this defense to its very name; cunning, edgy and with some risk. But, I like the Najdorf because it always allows you to play for a win! I don’t like stodgy games and openings that enter easily into drawn positions.

In this game my opponent, after castling king-side, immediately decides to go forward with a king side attack, pushing his g and h pawns and weakening his dark squares around his King. My plan was simple, I would exchange for his dark colored bishop and then play for those squares.

After I sacrificed my Queen for two minor pieces; Rook and Knight, I got the bishop exchange I wanted. My intention with the sacrifice and exchange was to gain position and eventually spawn a passed pawn on the queen-side of the board for compensation. Moreover, I liked the proposition of having more pieces to exert pressure on White's weakened dark squares around his King. My calculations worked out precisely as planned. I put the pigs on the 7th rank, exposed his weak squares as outposts for my knights and with a passed pawn it was just too much for my opponent to handle.

This game was a clean, well played and satisfying win for me, especially for my chess ego; it desperately needed a slight boost. Moreover, I submitted this game to MACA as a contender for the most interesting and decisive win competition.

RATING WATCH: 1562

Black has preference; better have a damn good chess board!

Last week at the local club I overheard a conversation where one of our players asked a TD about proper etiquette and rules regarding players who draw Black; concerning preference of chess sets and game clocks.

As most of us know, Black does have the preference of using a certain chess set over another set, as long as Black is at the board before playing time and White has not set up an acceptable regulation set. Black also has the preference to determine which side of the chess board the game clock is to be placed. However, concerning clocks; if one clock is digital with a delay versus a non-delay clock, then the clock with the proper delay is used. If both clocks are digital with a delay, then Black has preference of choice.

All pretty much standard stuff as most of us know, but I have to admit; if I’m playing White and Black insists on using his old crumpled up vinyl board where pieces have to do a balancing act from move to move, or if the chess board comes with blue or red colored squares that act painfully upon my eyes, I will put up a stink and I will demand a better setting or traditional board!

Bobby Fischer was quite the anal person when it came to the conditions of his playing environment. I guess you could say the same thing about me when comes down to the conditions of a chess board.