Delaware Chess Weblog

There doesn’t seem to be a plethora of chess tournament software on the market. It is ashame, really, since competition makes for better software. As best I can tell, the big money contenders are SwissSys and WinTD. I have never used either of these packages since they cost about $100 each. Instead I discovered a FREE software title called Sevilla. As best I can tell, having never used the others, Sevilla can do all the same ‘tournament’ things as its higher priced brethren. And by ‘tournament’ things I mean setup pairings, keep track of wins/draws/losses and create reports. In fact, it seems to have more pairing options then either of the other two, including an interesting pairing system known as Keizer. (SwissSys can, according to its website, generate report files that you can send to the USCF and cut down on your ratings fees. I would be interested in anyone’s comments regarding this since it seems to be a nice feature.)

I have used Sevilla to run school tournaments and it works exactly as it claims. It can work for team and individual tournaments and has considerably flexible options in scoring and pairings. It also comes with a good help file and templates of various tournaments, like swiss or round robin, which is a nice way to quickly setup a tournament. Finally, Sevilla will calculate ratings and generate reports in text and html for easy web publishing. If you don’t have tournament software, or even if you do, I recommend that you checkout Sevilla at http://www.jbfsoftware.com/ - afterall it is free

If you do use SwissSys or some other software please let us know its strengths and weaknesses by leaving a comment below.

Until next time…

Tom Fleetwood

January 16, 2005
2005 City of Wilmington Championship - 1st Annual;

Location: Central YMCA, 501 West Eleventh Street, Wilmington, DE 19801

4-SS; TC: G/60

REG: 9-9:30;

RDS: 9:45 - 12:15 - 2:45 - 5; 1/2 pt. Byes (limit 1) available; byes for rds 4 or 5 are irrevocable and must be requested prior to round 3;

OPEN SECTION: EF: $35 by 1/9, $45 at site (GM, IM free entry); $$: 60% of EF returned as prizes split as follows (portions of prize fund for section) $40%-25%-15%, Under 2000 10%, Under 1800 10%, Trophies: 1-3, X, A, B, Junior, Top out of City DCA Member, City Title plus Trophy to Wilmington Men’s Champion and Wilmington Women’s Champion (Wilmington Residents) + free entry into next year’s championship.

AMATEUR SECTION (Under 1600): EF: $25 if received by 1/9, $35 at site; $$: 60% of EF returned as prizes split as follows: $40%-25%-15%, U1400 10%, U1200 10%, Trophies: 1-3, C, D, E, F, junior, Top out of City DCA Member;

RESERVE SECTION (Under 1000): EF: $15 if received by 1/9, $20 at site; $$: books and equipment, trophies to 1-3, junior, Top out of City DCA Member, others based on entries.

QUADS: EF $20, $$50 per quad, TC: G/60; REG 9:30-10:00, RDS 10:15, 12:30, 2:30. DCA ($10) required, OSA.

Entries to: Dr. Ira Lee Riddle, NTD (Chief TD); 400 Newtown Rd.; Warminster PA 18974-5208; 215-674-9049, Iralee@aol.com. Directions to site: call Kevin Moss 302-777-7685, LKMoss19@aol.com. As always, just like the State Championship, light refreshments provided including pastries, coffee, tea, and water are provided. Web Site: www.DelawareChess.Org.

See the result of the 2004 Delaware Blitz Championship at the link below.

http://www.delawarechess.org/tournaments/2004dechessfestivalresults.htm

Thanks to all who attended.

The Delaware Chess Association is going to start a school chess league where schools will play each other much the same way as current sports programs. At the end of the “season” there will be a state champion chess team in both the high school and middle school levels! This league will begin with the 2005-2006 school year (next year) and likely take place from December to February. All interested high schools and middle schools should contact me ASAP to help ensure the success of this league.

Please email me to express your school’s interest in participating in the league or with any questions you may have.

Tom Fleetwood

What’s this, a name change already? The former ’site of the week’ is now the ‘review of the week’, and after only one post! I figured why limit myself to just Internet sites when there are also all those books, programs and pieces of chess equipment out there that can be reviewed too. So off we go…

This weeks site is http://www.yenra.com/headlines/chess.html

The site contains chess news via an rss feed which you could subscribe to if you have an rss reader. But that isn’t the reason I picked it. I think it is cool because it is contains information on many chess books and has links to download the games in the book. Have you ever bought a chess book and put games or positions into your computer to analyze? Well, no need to do that if your book is on this site. So if you already have a book, let say for example, The Art of Attack in Chess by Vukovic, you can go to this site and download all the games and positions from the book. Then if you have an alternative idea or are confused about the annotation you can load a position up in Junior, Fritz, or other program and let the computer perform its magic to help you better your game. Unfortunately, the layout of the site could be better and you may have to look down a loooonnngg page or two for your book or games but you just might learn something while you read the other information there. And there is an archive link that breaks the information down into months. My advice is pay attention to the link when you click on a title from the main page - it will tell you the date you want to scroll to.

So check it out, see the games online or download them to your computer in pgn format.

Feel free to leave a comment on your opinion of the site too!

Until next time…..

Tom Fleetwood

I thought I’d start a new benefit for the visitors to our site by pointing you to some other chess sites on the Internet you may not know about. In my bumblings around the ‘net’ I have come across quite a few neat sites to see games, learn tactics, practice with puzzles, read official rules and read the latest chess news. I thought it would be nice to share those sites with those of you who would be interested. So, without further ado, we begin with our first site of the week….

http://www.delawarechess.org/links.htm

Okay, okay, I know what you are thinking. How could I begin with a link to our own site? How self-promoting is that?? But let me explain. You see, I just wanted to point out that we already have links to many great chess sites on our links page. And since these are there already I don’t want to repeat them. So checkout the places like ‘chessbase’ for news and Dan Heisman’s page for all kinds of information.

The other reason I wanted to point out the links page is because I will add the Site of the Week links to that page as we go along. So it may be a good site to bookmark and come back to here and again.

Now, since you may feel somewhat cheated by this first site (even though it points out many more sites), take solace in the fact that it is the end of this week and I’ll put up a new site early next week.

In the meanwhile, if you have any sites you have found and think would make a good Site of the Week please email me to let me know.

Tom Fleetwood

The 2nd annual Delaware Chess Festival is coming on December 17, 2004. Read more about it here…

http://www.delawarechess.org/tournaments/2004dechessfestival.htm

The Bear Scholastic Chess Club is sponsoring a tournament for kids and adults during the winter holidays.

See here http://www.delawarechess.org/tournaments/christmasvacationtournament.htm for more information.