New Grades

The grades for July 2018 have just been updated on the ECF Website.

Check your grade here

Tuesday 26th June Analysis Evening

Next Tuesday - 26th June, Dave Ireland  and the A Team have kindly agreed to analyse any of your games that you would like to review. 

This is a really great training opportunity for all players - to get comments on any ideas you missed or how you could improve your general play.

So, feel free to bring in as many games as you want analysed - 

One small request - if anyone has access to a flip chart, could you let Ed Goodwin know. 

Five Minute Blitz & League AGM Date

Pictures from our five minute handicap blitz. It was fast and furious last night with 5 minutes on the clock and all play all and in some cases players starting a rook down! This produced some surprising results which added to the fun of the evening. Thanks go to Ed Goodwin for organising the evening and to Lana Sanchez Nasibova for all the pictures and acting as chief arbiter and scorer. Scores as follows:
Aran Paul 10.5
Ed Goodwin 10
Wesley Beeston 9
Dave Filer 7.5
Mike Johnson 7
Margarita 6
Josh Pink 6.5
Simon W 4
John Loughnane 3
John Conway 3
Dave Ireland 5
Seb 1
Paul Sweatman 4.5

Next week the plan is for players to bring in some of their games and Dave Ireland and the A Team will provide some expert analysis and hints and tips on how you could improve your chess.

A note for your diaries next week is the League AGM. Wednesday 27th June at Warwick University. Meeting Room 2.

7.30pm start. 

What is Josh thinking in this picture ? 

 Looks like John has scared off his opponent!

 Our two resident Grandmasters. Rumour has it Magnus Carlsen has refused to play them for fear of losing his world championship title.

 I do not like that look John is giving Wes?!

We had a new player come along last night, he wasn't very good though, so cant really see him carrying on with chess. I did give him a few tips though to try and help him improve. .

Blitz Chess on Tuesday 19th June

Next Tuesday, following on from our successful evening with doubles Chess 960, Ed and the A team have come up with a very imaginative way to play 5 minute chess. 

It is called handicap chess - Here are the rules as devised by Ed :-

For the handicap blitz it will be 5 minutes each for a game.

The interesting bit is the handicaps. 

Players will fall into 4 groups based on ECF grade

Group 1 Under 70

Group 2 70 – 109

Group 3 110 – 149

Group 4 150 and over 

When 2 players in the same group both players play with a full set of pieces.

When the 2 players are one group apart the stronger player has a Knight or bishop removed

When the 2 players are 2 groups apart the stronger player has a rook removed

When the 2 players are 3 groups apart the stronger player has 2 minor pieces removed. 

So for example if Dave Ireland played Margarita Dave would have to have 2 minor pieces removed. 

When material is removed the stronger player can choose which pieces to remove e.g. Dave could choose to remove both knights or the King’s knight and the Queen’s bishop etc. 

Players will do their own pairings as long as they don’t play the same person more than once.

This promises to be another different evening with lots of "fun chess" Open to all members and guests.

Chess 960 Evening

Here are some pics from our Chess 960 evening. It certainly was a "different" evening to a normal club night and there was lots of puzzled faces and scratching of heads - and how does castling work in chess 960? Who knows! It was a really fun night and Thanks must go to Ed Goodwin for organising the event and to the A team players for the suggestion.

More events to follow over the next few months.!

Another Event for Tuesday 12th June

Hi All,

Due to the resounding success of last Tuesday's simultaneous event with our resident "Simultaneous Expert" Dave Ireland, Ed Goodwin and the A Team players have kindly agreed to organise

a "Doubles Fischer Random Tournament" 

Now, I can already hear you saying "what the heck is a Doubles Fischer Random Tournament" and I must admit I had to scurry to Wikipedia to look up what it is all about. 

In Ed's words here is brief outline of how we see the evening :-

2 players in each team taking it in turns to move.

Starting time 8p.m. Number of rounds 3. 

The games we will be playing is called Fischer random or Chess 960. This is a chess variant where the pieces are set up at random on the 1^st and 8^th ranks. Otherwise rules of chess are the same as a normal game except castling which will require some explanation on the night.

 For anyone wanting to prepare look at Chess 960 on Wikapedia. 

I suggest the following :-

Clocks set to 10 minutes per team.

Teams  created by splitting players into 2 groups by strength and picking 1 player from each group.

Starting positions drawn from a set of preprinted   positions .

We should have 4 teams ideally, depending on numbers we may have some teams with  one player or some with 3 players. 

There is much scope for confusion and I may have overlooked something major but hopefully this just adds to the fun.

This is another new event we have never tried, however reading the Wikipedia text, it looks like all those long winter nights you spent studying openings will not help you

Here is a link to the Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess960

Chess960 Randomizing the main pieces had long been known as Shuffle Chess; however, Chess960 introduces restrictions on t...

The evening promises to be something very different to a normal "club evening" and I suspect will raise lots of questions and scratching of heads  

As normal, for all club events, the competition is free to enter and open to all club members and guests.

If you could get to the club for 7.30pm this will then give us time to organise teams, explain the rules! ready for a start at 8 pm. 

We do have another Simultaneous event planned in four or five weeks time, however, if anyone has any suggestion for future events please let me know and we will gladly organise something if it is possible.

Finally, here is a small excerpt from Wikipedia to whet your appetite 

Chess960, also called Fischer Random Chess (originally Fischerandom), is a variant of chess invented and advocated by former world chess champion Bobby Fischer, announced publicly on June 19, 1996, in Buenos Aires, Argentina.^[1][2] It employs the same board and pieces as standard chess, but the starting position of the pieces on the players' home ranks is randomized. The random setup renders the prospect of obtaining an advantage through the memorization of opening lines impracticable, compelling players to rely instead on their talent and creativity.

Randomizing the main pieces had long been known as Shuffle Chess; however, Chess960 introduces restrictions on the randomization, "preserving the dynamic nature of the game by retaining bishops of opposite colours for each player and the right to castle for both sides".^[3] The result is 960 unique possible starting positions