Delaware Chess Weblog

Here is a good webpage to demonstrate what the author rightfully calls, “The Ultimate Blunder.” These are games where a player resigned in a winning position! Of course, the position looks lost but it goes to show that sometimes you should make the person prove they can win the game. Unfortunately the answer/winning moves are right next to the diagrams so you might want something to cover them up. Go and view these positions and see if you can find a way out where these players could not. The site can be found at http://www.xs4all.nl/~timkr/chess2/resigntxt.htm

Have fun!

Until next time….

Tom Fleetwood

Play in the Knights of Columbus 2nd annual catholic youth chess tournament on Saturday, April 2, 2005. More details and a registration form can be found here

http://www.delawarechess.org/tournaments/KOCChess.htm

May 6-7. GPP: 10 Delaware
New Castle County Open. 4SS, G/90. Central YMCA, 501 West Eleventh Street, Wilmington, Delaware 19801. Reg: Friday, 5/6: 5-6:00. Rds: Fri, May 6th: 6:30. Sat, May 7th: 9:30 - 1:30 - 5:30. 1/2 pt. Bye (limit 1) available; bye for rd 4 is irrevocable and must be requested prior to start of round 2. OPEN SECTION: EF: $35 by 4/30, $50 at site (GM, IM free entry); $$: 60% of EF returned as prizes split as follows (portions of prize fund for section) $40%-25%-15%, GTD $$1st 200, 2nd 100 Under 2000 10%, Under 1800 10%, Trophies: 2-3, X, A, B, Junior, County Trophy to Champion + free entry into next year’s event. AMATEUR SECTION (Under 1600): EF: $25 if received by 4/30, $40 at site; $$: 60% of EF returned as prizes split as follows: $40%-25%-15%, U1400 10%, U1200 10%, Trophies: 1-3, C, D, E, F, junior. RESERVE SECTION (Under 1000): EF: $15 if received by 4/30, $20 at site; $$: Books and equipment, Trophies to 1-3, junior, 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 Web Site: http://www.delawarechess.org/. Book and Equipment seller on premises.

The Linares 2005 double round robin supertournament began on 2/23/05. Players include Kasparov, Anand, Topalov, Leko, Adams, Kasimdzhanov and Vallejo Pons. You can watch the games on any of the chess servers (USCL, ICC, Playchess) or view results and game replays at the tournament homepage http://www.ajedrezenlinares.com/XXII_ciudad_linares.htm. Hopefully this tournament will provide the same fighting attitude found at the recent Corus supertournament.

Practicing tactics is an extremely important part of training to be a better chess player. These mostly occur in the middle game when patzers like myself wonder what just happened to our position and/or our pieces! The ability to quickly recognize tactical opportunities will greatly improve your game and your rating. As such, it would be nice if there was software out there to help improve this part of your game. Well, rest assured, there is tons of it. One of the best is called Intensive Course Tactics by George Renko. This training CD offers over 4,000 tactical positions classified by themes. That is correct, over 4,000! Themes include such tactics as forks, pins, zugzwang, win of time, deflection and many many others for a total of 120 databases worth of training. But what I like best about the CD is the no-nonsense approach to training. There are not long pages of text to read - in fact, there aren’t even short pages of text to read. Renko has chosen the pedagogical strategy that we learn by doing and thus has the user dive right into the fray. When you choose a theme and load a position Renko typically gives you a couple of examples to play through to demonstrate the idea and then the fun really begins. When you load the next game you are suddenly faced with a clock counting down and the understated but pressure filled line, “please enter a move for white” (or black depending upon the scenario). You job is to come up with the best move for the current position within the time allotted - not much unlike a real game, eh? And speaking of real games, most of the positions in the databases are not canned or odd ‘puzzle’ positions but actually come from real games played by various players over the years. So, at the time, they had to make the same decision you are faced with now. What if you choose the wrong move? The program tells you and gives you the option to try again or see the solution. The program also keeps score - each time you make a wrong choice your score decreases. This also makes it an excellent program for a chess coach to use to track the progress of his/her students. This isn’t a CD you would sit down and run through all at once - how could you with over 4,000 postions? But rather one you can use over and over in small increments to practice and hone your skills. It can be especially helpful before tournaments, for example.

What do you need to run the CD? The good news is that it comes with the free Chessbase Reader so everything you need is contained on the CD. However, if you have one of the Fritz playing programs (Fritz, Junior, Shredder etc…) you can also run the CD in one of those programs without installing the Chessbase Reader.

Overall, I highly recommend this training CD for any player but especially those that struggle sometimes in coming up with a plan (like me). The only downside I really see is that, since it is on a computer, it is in two dimensions. You will have to work to translate you ability to see tactics on the computer to the actual 3-D chess board. Of course, you can always setup the positions on the chess board before you try to solve them. And the huge amount of practice you can accomplish with the CD more than makes up for the 2-D dilemma. This program will improve your chess game.

Until next time….

Tom Fleetwood

This week’s site comes from the London Chess Center and has a wealth of information and links for the chess enthusiast. The main site is found at http://www.chesscenter.com/ but the specific part of the site I want to talk about is called The Week in Chess (TWIC). TWIC can be linked to directly by going to http://www.chesscenter.com/twic/twic.html. When you first look at this page you will notice that there is a lot of stuff going on. News, events, book reviews, recent games, information on chess theory etc… It can be a little confusing at first glance but if you take your time you will quickly become acquainted with the site and find much useful information. In particular, the site gathers together games from the previous week’s tournaments all around the world and packages them into downloadable files. These files come in both the pgn and chessbase formats so you can replay them in whatever chess software you have. This offers a great opportunity to add games to your database and to keep up with the latest moves being played by the grandmasters. TWIC also offers a new service called TWIC Theory. It is an electronic magazine discussing the latest chess theory. This new service is free during the month of February so now is a great time to check it out and see if it is worthwhile.

Until next time…

Tom Fleetwood

The Newark Knights won there 7th match against the U. of DE. last night, 2.5 to .5. Brad Thomas and Bruce Smith (unrated and very little tournament experience) won and Kevin Pytel drew for our total of 2.5 points. Our next match will be March 10th (2nd Thursday of March) at home against the Fraim Chess Club. They hope to have 8 players show. Please let Gary W. our team captain knew of your desire to play. You need to get into the ladder challenge events and club championship to gain experience and simulate tournament pratice and match play. Just a reminder that our club championship will start next week, you can still join in for $5, see Mark or Gary. It will be in a new format : Tennis Grand Prix Circuit style. It should be fun. The 4th Sat of the month Quad is on for Feb 22, Rick Martin will be helping run this one. Rick Lathem

Alas, my favorite online chess store, www.chessdiscounters.com, has virtually gone out of business. That place had some incredibly good deals on chess software and equipment - which is, I suppose, probably why they didn’t last. I say ‘virtually’ because you can still visit their site and buy chess books but that is all they now sell. But they do seem to offer good prices on those so you may want to check out their store if you are looking for some good chess reading.

The good news is that chessdiscounters was kind enough to point me in the direction of another online chess store that also seems to have darn good pricing. That site can be found at http://www.wholesalechess.com/ and they sell all kinds of chess material and claim they will “match anyone’s prices online right now.” And I would tend to believe them because they already sell the items I have looked at considerably cheaper than other sites. One example is the Chessbase 9 program - they sell the Mega package for $269.99. Now, while that certainly isn’t a cheap piece of software by any means, consider that it is $30-$100 cheaper than any other place I could find it. You should also checkout their excellent prices on chess sets - especially if you run a club or just want some inexpensive vinyl boards and pieces. They also have a very wide selection of material - if you are looking for it they probably have it.

As a moderator for a school chess club, and fairly frugal individual, I am always on the lookout for inexpensive chess material and http://www.wholesalechess.com/ seems to be a good place to start.

Until next time….

Tom Fleetwood

Delaware G/30 Championship

February 13, 2005

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

Phone number on site:

6-SS

Time Control: G/30

REG: 9-9:30

RDS: 9:45 – 11:00 - 12:30 – 1:45 - 3:00 – 4:15

1/2 pt. Bye (limit 1) available; bye for rd 4 or later is irrevocable and must be requested prior to start of round 2

OPEN SECTION:

EF: $35 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 State DCA Member,

State Title plus First Place Trophy to Delaware Champion (Delaware Resident) + free entry into next year’s championship.

AMATEUR SECTION (Under 1600):

EF: $25 at site only;

$$: 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 State DCA Member;

RESERVE SECTION (Under 1000):

EF: $15 at site only;

$$: books and equipment,

trophies to 1-3, junior, Top out of State DCA Member, others based on entries.

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.

Book and Equipment seller on premises.

If you have questions you can jump on over to our message boards too. Join us at http://www.delawarechess.org/cgi-bin/forum/ikonboard.cgi?act=SF;f=4