Thursday 16 August 2018

Brand New Junior Open Rapid Play

Coventry Chess Club are holding their very First One Day Junior Competition

This is a first for Coventry Chess Club and anyone under 18 is welcome to join.

The entrance fee is only £3.00 in Advance or £5.00 on the day.

Full details are: -


Coventry Chess Club
1st Junior Open Rapidplay

Sunday 23rd  September 2018
Massey Ferguson Social Club
Broad Lane
Coventry CV5 7NL

An ECF graded event
Open and Under 120 sections



Entry fee
£3
Entries on the day £5 will be accepted at the organisers’ discretion

Eligibility
Players must be under 18 on 31st August 2018

ECF Membership
The tournament is open to players who are Junior ECF Silver, Gold or Platinum members. If your membership expires on 31st August 2018 you will need to renew it see details on the ECF website https://www.englishchess.org.uk/guide-to-renewing-your-ecf-membership/
.
New players can apply for free junior membership on the English Chess Federation website https://www.englishchess.org.uk/guide-to-joining-the-ecf/

Parental Responsibility
Parents or guardians must be present and remain responsible for their children during the tournament.

Time Control        All moves in 15 minutes plus 10 second increment per move.

Schedule                               
Round1  11:00 – 11:50 Round 2    12:00 – 12:50
Round 3    13:10 -  14:00 Round 4    14:20 -  15:10
Round 5    15:20 -  16:00

Prizes    
Medals will be awarded for the following scores :--
Gold 4½ or 5  Silver 3½ or 4 Bronze 2½ or 3.
All players who participate in the final round will be awarded a certificate of participation.                    
                                     
                                                  
Entry Form
Postal Entries send to:
Ed Goodwin, 1 Conway Avenue, Coventry CV4 9JA
Cheques payable to “Coventry Chess Club”

Email entry
Send entry details to edhgoodwin@gmail.com and pay by bank transfer to
09-01-32 93082588 (payer reference the player’s name)


Junior’s Details


Forename                                                                                                           
Surname                                                                                                         
ECF Membership Num. (12345):                                                                       
ECF Grading Reference (6 digits, followed by 1 letter):                                                                               
ECF Rapidplay Grade (July 2018):                                                                        
(If no grading reference or rapidplay grade you can still enter please give details of playing strength)
Date of Birth (dd/mm/yyyy):(required for all players)                           /                       /                      
Section Entered (please tick)    120 or over __  119 or under __


Parent/Guardian’s Details
Telephone                                                                                                                
Mobile                                                                                                            
E-mail address                                                                                                       

Postal Address                                                                                                                                           
                                                                                                                                                                   Postcode                                                                                        
Entry Fee     (£3 or £5 for entry on the day)  £                                  





Thursday 26 July 2018

New Grades

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

Check your grade here


Saturday 23 June 2018

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. 

Wednesday 20 June 2018

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. .




Saturday 16 June 2018

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.

Friday 15 June 2018

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.!




Friday 8 June 2018

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 1st and 8th 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 youEmoji

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



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

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

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