The Tal Memorial is currently being played in Moscow with several of the world’s top grandmasters. Carlsen, Anand, Kramnik and more are battling it out in this super-tournament. You can watch the games live on the tournament site located here: http://russiachess.org/championship/2013/. There is game commentary but it is in Russian. You can also listen to analysis at chess.fm and/or on many other chess sites, like Chess.com.
The U.S. Junior Closed Championship has also just started. You can watch the games and analysis with GM Ben Finegold and GM Yasser Sierawan – in English 
by going to this site: http://www.uschesschamps.com/live. You can count on this tournament for some crazy openings/games that often eschew drawn games.
Both of these tournaments and their associated commentary offer a wealth of opportunity to improve your own chess prowess.
Enjoy!
Last month, the Charter School of Wilmington hosted students from Thomas Edison Charter in a chess match. The Principal of Thomas Edison Charter, Salome Thomas-El, summed up the day as follows:
“The Thomas Edison Charter chess team enjoyed the opportunity to play some chess matches against students from The Charter School of Wilmington. As an elementary/middle school we knew our matches would be tough against intelligent and talented high school students. My students held their own, winning about half of the matches we played. We would like to thank CSW for hosting a great event and hope this leads to developing a scholastic chess league in DE.”
The Charter School of Wilmington would also like to see a scholastic league in Delaware and looks forward to playing Thomas Edison again in the future.
The Delaware News Journal also stopped by and wrote an article about the match and about the Edison chess team. You can see the online version of that article, complete with pictures and video, by going here.
Charter vs. Edison
Here are two games from the match (the top two boards)…
Congratulations to Dave Gertler for winning the Delaware State Championship Title for the 11th time!
Dave was kind enough to give his perspective of the event (thanks Dave!), which you can read below…
———-
January’s Delaware Open was among the strongest in recent years, with seven players rated above 2000 among the 23 entrants. Charlie Bouzoukis and I led the in-state contingent, each hoping to earn our eleventh Delaware champion or co-champion title. Defending champ Phil Saponaro and previous champ Jim Erskine, among others, also presented strong challenges.
However, a wild card came down from PA: International Master Bryan Smith, whose hefty 2520 rating made him a heavy favorite (as he outrated the next player by more than 250 points).
Charlie took a half-point bye in round one of this five-round event, while I ceded a second-round draw to expert Darrin Berkley. Smith, Erskine, and Brad Thomas had the only 2-0 scores. In round 3, Smith disposed of Erskine, while I prevailed over Thomas. This produced a round-four clash between the two top-rated players. With careful play, I established a strong advantage and felt confident enough to reject Bryan’s draw offer. In the next few moves, though, I missed chances to drive my advantage home, and I settled for a draw by repetition.
Bryan met Charlie in round five, in a showdown of the only players with 3.5 points. Charlie had won every game since his first-round bye, and he defended a pawn-down endgame skillfully against Bryan, but he made a fatal slip in time pressure just when the draw was within his grasp. Thus, Bryan took clear first with 4.5 points. With a long, nerve-rattling win over Erskine, I ended up placing clear second, as the other two 3-1 players – Saponaro and Vlad Anderson – played to a draw. Since Bryan isn’t from Delaware, that made me the state champion.
Finishing in a tie for third at 3.5 were Bouzoukis, Saponaro, Anderson, and Bill Trueman (a frequent opponent of mine when we were juniors in New Jersey in the 1970s!).
The under-1600 section had only 9 entrants, and the top three places were clearly achieved (with no ties). Darrell Smith won with 4.5 points; Mathew Martello was second with 4; and Art Sargent took third with 3.5.
The tournament was held in the Sheraton Wilmington South Hotel, just off Route 95 in New Castle. That hotel was built years ago but was prevented from opening because it was larger than the specifications that had been approved. It’s nice to see the hotel finally being used! Thanks to organizer/director Kevin Pytel for a smoothly run event.
-Dave Gertler
High school classrooms tend to be noisy, but one-way to assure silence in the room is to sponsor a chess tournament. Dr. Fleetwood of The Charter School of Wilmington invited Ms. Rogers Chess Strategy students to a chess match at his school on January 31, 2013. Six Smyrna students made the trip and were paired up with CSW students. The students played 2 rounds with CSW winning both rounds. Dr. Fleetwood and Ms. Rogers also played one round with a win for CSW again!! Even though the Smyrna students have had inner-club tournaments, this was a first time experience for a match outside their fellow classmates. It was an eye opening experience for all. Smyrna School District has allowed Ms. Rogers to teach an elective class called Chess Strategies as part of the schools course offerings. The majority of the students came to Ms. Rogers’ class without having ever played the game before. Those that knew the game were helpful in teaching the others. Throughout the year, the game rules, chess notation, and chess strategies have been taught along with many in-class tournaments. Ms. Rogers is grateful to CSW for allowing her students to have some chess experience outside the classroom. On March 25, the Smyrna Eagles will host the Thomas Edison Charter School in a match to help prepare the Thomas Edison students plan for their trip to Nationals in Tennessee later this year. There are plans in the working to create a Scholastic Chess League in Delaware. Something that has been missing in the state for many years. If you are interested in being part of a scholastic league, leave a comment below or contact me.
The players for Charter were: Dean D’Souza, Alex Fish, Isaac Kempton, Chris Bouchard, Pranay Malempati, Jake Savage, Abhinav Nigam, Sampras Ko, Rohith Venkataraman, Richard Wang, Viroon Yong, and Hung Nguyen
The players for Smyrna were: Anthony Euren, Luigi Arcidiacona, Ryan Foulk, Summer Price, Edwin Ortiz. Christian McCoy
You can see a selection of 3 games below. (select a new game via the drop-down box)
Thank you to Corla Rogers for this write-up of a great day!
The 2013 Candidates Match is underway in London, England. The winner of this double round-robin tournament will be the next challenger to Vishy Anand for the World Championship. The top 4 rated players are there (Carlsen, Kramnik, Aronian, Radjabov) as well as 4 other strong grandmasters (Ivanchuk, Svidler, Grischuk, Gelfand). The games start at 2:00pm London time. To see the time in your area, go to this site. You can view this ChessBase site to see the daily schedule and pairings.
If you want to tune in to the event live, you can watch the games with live commentary for free by going to this site.
Who do you think is going to win? Let us know by adding a comment below.
A new chess club has started recently in Delaware – the Brandywine Chess Club.
The club meets Fridays from 5:30 to 8:30pm in Meeting Room 209A on the second floor of the Brandywine Hundred Library at 1300 Foulk Road in Wilmington, Delaware. All levels of play are welcome. Stop by and join them for a fun night of chess.
Join us for the 2013 Delaware State Open Chess Championship. The tournament will be held on January 12-13, 2013 at the Sheraton Wilmington South Hotel in New Castle, De. For full details, see this flier.
Thanks to all that came to the DE Senior Championship it was a great tournament. As it turned out there were two quads, the above 1700 section had Charlie Bouzoukis, Charlie Vaughn, Mike Sharp, and Dean Miller. After some hard fought chess games Charlie Bouzoukis was crowned the 2012 Senior Champion. In the U1700 section we had Will Saxe, Dennis Jones, Dan Hamilton, and Victor Rein. In the first round Victor played an outstanding game against Will and scored an upset – congrats, Victor. In the second round Victor had Dennis in serious time trouble and played an outstanding game that could have drawn, but went for the win instead and, as happens sometimes, ended up losing the game. Dennis was most relieved, and went on to win the U1700 DE Senior Championship, congrats Dennis.
Joe Casey, a local chess player who attended a number of our tournaments over the years, passed away last Thursday.
A viewing for him will be held next Tues evening from 7-9pm at Torbert Funeral Chapel South, 1145 E. Lebanon Road (Rt. 10),Dover, DE.
A funeral mass will be held at 10am Wed at Holy Cross Catholic Church, 631 S. State Street, Dover, DE.
His obituary can be viewed here:
http://www.torbertfuneral.com/
Dan Heismann has also posted a nice piece on Joe from Dan’s perspective. That can be found at http://blog.chess.com/danheisman/joe-casey-chess-player
Join us on November 3, 2012 for the Delaware Senior Rated Championship age 50 and above. The event will be held at the Calvary United Methodist Church in Milford, De. For full details, see this flier.