VCCC

Next tournament – August Swiss

Written by admin on August 3rd, 2010

The next USCF-rated club tournament will begin on August 9th and run over the course of three Monday nights (last round August 23rd). It is a three round Swiss, game in 75 minutes.

Even if you do not think you’ll be able to make every week, you can still attend and get a couple games in. The tournament director is very flexible and able to shoehorn people into tournaments even if they show up for the last round. Of course, it’s best if you can make every round (or let the TD know of your absence ahead of time, so he can plan for byes and perhaps playing that night (as a house player).

Posted in Club, Tournament | 2 Responses »

Any takers?

Written by admin on July 21st, 2010

Anyone from the club looking to play in the NY State Championship this year?

Full details can be found here, but here’s a summary:

Sept 3-6, 4-6 or 5-6, Labor Day weekend at Albany Marriott

Open Section $1500-700-400-200, top Under 2300/Unr $800. FIDE rated. State title and $100 bonus to top scoring NY State resident.

Under 2200 Section $1000-500-300-150.

Under 2000 Section $1000-500-300-150.

Under 1800 Section $1000-500-300-150.

Under 1600 Section $800-400-250-150, top Under 1400 $300.

Under 1300 Section $700-350-200-100, top Under 1100 $200, trophies to top 5, 1st 800-999, Under 800, Unrated.

3-day schedule: Reg. ends Sat 10 am, rds. Sat 11 & 6, Sun 11 & 6, Mon 10 & 4:15.

4-day schedule: Reg. ends Fri 6:30 pm, rds. Fri 7 pm, Sat 6 pm, Sun 11 & 6, Mon 10 & 4:15.

2-day schedule: Reg. ends Sun. 10:30 am, rds Sun 11, 1:30, 3:30 & 6, Mon 10 & 4:15, no 2-day schedule in Open.

Posted in Tournament | 2 Responses »

More info on Stanley H. Chadwick

Written by admin on July 6th, 2010

Via The Chess Mind blog, I came across the online collection of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, a newspaper published from 1842 to 1963. On a whim I searched for Stanley Chadwick and surprisingly got over 200 hits. The results are images of the scanned newspaper entries and are difficult to view directly. But I am including one page (from November 26th, 1899) that has an “image” of Mr. Chadwick, and lists him as secretary of the Brooklyn chess club. If you can open it in an application that allows for zooming, you should be able to read the story (look to the right side of the page).

Posted in History | No Responses »

Who needs opening theory?

Written by admin on July 6th, 2010

For those of us who obsess about trying to memorize opening variations, this game helps prove it isn’t necessary. From a news article on ChessVibes about a recent chess tournament in Holland, comes this game by the tournament winner, GM Matthew Sadler playing Black against an IM. Look at the first moves of this game!

Of course it can be said that White did not play the most accurate moves, and allowed a killing blow (19. … Nxg3!)..but, considering his title, it is safe to say he played better than 99.9% of the opponents you will face across the board.

Maybe it will cause me to take up 1. … a6 and 2. … h6 as a universal defensive system.

Posted in Games | 1 Response »

June Swiss games posted

Written by admin on July 6th, 2010

Seven games from the recently completed June Swiss (6 round G/30) have been added to the tournament game section. As always, members are invited to submit their games (see here for details). They do not have to be from games played at the club.

The games are entered into Chessbase 10 and analyzed with Fritz – not as strong as Rybka and some others, but strong enough for our purposes (finds tactical variations and blunders).

Posted in Club | 2 Responses »

New USCF rating feature

Written by admin on July 3rd, 2010

The USCF has added a Game Statistics section to the player’s rating listing on their website. This section provides a breakdown of winning percentage against the various classes, both overall (since 1991) and the last 12 months.

Posted in Tools | No Responses »

Another game viewer

Written by admin on June 30th, 2010

The chess game viewer used in the previous post did not quite work for me – the board did not match up exactly with the square boundaries. So it looks like some pieces are halfway between squares. I saw this behavior when using Google Chrome and Internet Explorer, although another member of the club who visited the site did not see this behavior. In any case, I thought it best to look at other options.

The next one up is ChessFlash PGN Viewer. The previous viewer was a plugin that was installed into the WordPress application. This one is a standalone app. You visit their website, enter in the chess game (in PGN format), and it will give you code you copy/paste into your post.

Here is an example, one of the first games I played with a club member.

Posted in Tools | No Responses »

Testing chess game viewer

Written by admin on June 24th, 2010

There is a new plugin available to display chess games that you can play through. Making it easy to post games within the blog.

To try it out, here is one of the last round games in the recently completed June Swiss (6 Round G/30).

Reminder for those who played in the tournament – send in your games! Details can be found here.

Posted in Tools | No Responses »

Fun with your rating history

Written by admin on June 9th, 2010

MSA is a program (named after the Member Services Area of the USCF site) that grabs all your tournament history, crunches the numbers, and presents you with charts and interesting data for your perusal. For example, your biggest upset, record number of wins (or losses) in a row, etc. You can do this for anyone’s rating history (all you need is their USCF id, which is easy to find).

Here are some screenshots:

Posted in Tools | No Responses »

Welcome

Written by admin on June 5th, 2010

Welcome to the Vassar-Chadwick chess club blog!

This site will hopefully become the place for current events and interesting information about and by club members.

To start, let’s look at a game from the man responsible for creating the club.

Stanley Chadwick started the chess club in the 1930s. While I could not find any information online regarding him or the early days of the club, the following game (played in 1911) is possibly by the same Mr. Chadwick, and is a thrilling win against the King’s gambit.

Source: Alex Dunn’s chess column, from the USCF site (Dec 2000).

KING’S GAMBIT ACCEPTED [C33]
W: unknown
B: Stanley Chadwick
PCCA Gambit Tournament, 1911

1. e4 e5 2. f4 exf4 3. Nc3 Nc6 4. d4 Qh4+ 5. Ke2 b6 6. Nf3 Ba6+ 7. Kd2 Qf2+ 8. Ne2 Nb4 9. a3 Nf6 10. Qe1 d5 11. Kc3 Nxe4+ 12. Kb3 Bc4+ 13. Ka4 b5+ 14. Ka5 Nc6+ 15. Ka6 b4+ 16. Kb7 Rb8+ 17. Kxc6 Rb6+ 18. Kxc7 Bd6+ 19. Kc8 Ke7 mate.

Final Position:

Image created using Chess Diagram Generator

Posted in History, Introduction | No Responses »

Official Blog of the Vassar-Chadwick Chess Club