Author: John Wright, SGVCC President

First round match starts this Saturday, November 7, at 10:00 a.m. PST, against LA Fortress. There is an important change from Season 1: There are now two segments to the match, a Rapid 15/2 time control and a Blitz 3/2 time control.  You can play in both or just one if you prefer.  The Blitz match will start at 11:15, following the conclusion of the Rapid segment.  Both segments count the same for total score.  So, if the Rapid is a tie, then the Blitz could decide, and vice-versa.  We are expecting about six players on the LA Fortess side.  Registration for each segment starts one hour before the start of that segment. Again, you can join in for the Rapid, Blitz or BOTH segments. Hope to see many of you join us!

We may all be physically stuck at home but your fellow Club members are making their presence felt abroad—online that is! We are presently in team matches against clubs from Scotland, France, and Singapore. We also have our old foes the Reno Chess Club. The matches started on July 15th and are what is called “Daily Play” by Chess.com, who organized the event. But in fact it is more like old school correspondence chess as you have three days to make a move. Each participant plays two games against the same player in each match.

The match against Singapore has the most players, with seven on each team. But someone may have forgotten to remind our opponents of the time control as Randy Hough won his first game in record time—-a mere 3 days! Randy was surprised at the speed of his opponent’s moves but certainly took advantage of it.  His e6 pawn push was a nice way to pick up the errant Black Bishop on g4. It is our featured game:

In fact, we are now up 4-0 against the team from Bishan, Randy also won his second game and Chris Stychinsky, not to be outdone, also finished 2-0.

But, it is much more likely that the matches are going to take many months to finish. We are still waiting for our match against Thousand Oaks Chess Club to conclude, which started last March and is 93% done, with @ObedientRunner playing the clock out in a lost position. We will be providing periodic updates but you can check out the games yourself by following these links:

United Kingdom: https://www.chess.com/club/matches/san-gabriel-valley-chess-club/1145550

Singapore: https://www.chess.com/club/matches/san-gabriel-valley-chess-club/1147218

France: https://www.chess.com/club/matches/san-gabriel-valley-chess-club/1147212

Reno: https://www.chess.com/club/matches/san-gabriel-valley-chess-club/1147214

Azerbaijan: https://www.chess.com/club/matches/san-gabriel-valley-chess-club/1147248

After an ignominious start, losing 9-1 in our first match, SGVCC won three of its last four matches to finish 4-4 over 8 rounds. Matches were played on Saturdays with a game 15|2 sec t/c. The League was sponsored by Chess.com and many thanks go to our own Laura Nyström for serving as our club administrator.

In Round 8 we faced the Huntsville Club of Alabama. The city of Huntsville is nicknamed “Rocket City” for its NASA facility that employs over 6,000 people. And it looked like they were trying to send us into orbit early as we were down after the first round of games. But two wins in round two and a half-point forfeit gave us the victory.

Like traditional in-person team events there was a lot of excitement each match. It all comes down to how the team does and so even if you lost your own games you could cheer on your teammates. The Chess.com playing site was ideal as you could see other games in real time and we had some amazing comeback games in the last round that had us fixated on our screens!

The only downside we ran into were teams not having an even number of players, which meant some people did not always get a game. We apologize if this happened to you. It was never clear how many players would show for each team until the time of the event, so hopefully that improves.

To see the full match results, including any game played during the match, visit: https://www.chess.com/clubs/matches/live/san-gabriel-valley-chess-club

Thanks as well to all our members who participated! It was great fun meeting people from other clubs and checking out their club websites. Keep watching for the next rapid play Clubs League.

Featured Game

Standings After Round 8 (Final Round)

After coasting to victory last week in Round 6, SGVCC needed heroic efforts in our match versus the Club from Ayer, Massachusetts. It all came down to the final two games on Boards 2 and 3, where Chris Stychinsky and Richard Reid had to overcome very difficult potions to help us win 4.5 to 3.5, by just a single game.

It seemed we were coming from behind the entire match.  First, John Wright on Board 1 went down quickly losing both games. But then @Capital2 on Board 4 got us back even with strong play, taking both games. Chris had lost his first game and Richard had won his, so the match was tied at 3 points each going into the last two games.

But no sooner did we get a reprieve we were fighting for our lives again.  Richard was Black against the London System and White had broken through on the Kingside, first by sacrificing a piece, then getting the piece back plus all three of Black’s Kingside pawns! Chris was White against the Black Lion Defense and the “Lion” was roaring! Our opponents meet at a pool hall and it looked like they were going to run the table! Later computer evaluations have both our hero’s lost, but it’s people–not machines–that finish chess games.

In a time scramble Richard was able to create his own passed pawn and the players agreed to a draw with seconds remaining. At that point, the match was still tied and it was all up to Chris. Appropriately, we have made this our featured game this week:

If you look at White’s position after Black played #33…Rh8, it is hard to see how White avoids getting checkmated in short order. Chris’s solution on move #34 seemed to rattle Black, who was still winning, but likely frustrated by White’s stubborn resistance. And “Nimzotech” was starting to make some threats of his own too.  Sure enough, five moves later Black dropped a piece and the Lion had been tamed!