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SGVCC member “Wandering Knight” (aka Randall Hough) sets an early blazing trail with four straight wins against international Daily Club competition. Not beginners luck! Randy has more chess experience than most of us put together: National Master, National Tournament Director, International Arbiter and more. But what made him into the “Chess Cuisinart” of Daily Play? Let’s look and learn:

Black opts for the ultra sharp Najdorf Sicilian defense and White plays a theoretical novelty (TN) on move 10 with f4, opening dark square weaknesses. Black hops on these weaknesses with 13)…Qb6!, Qa7, and follows with b5, then b4, picking up a pawn. After 20)…Nf2+ (again a dark square!) picking up more material and leading to the exposing of Whites’s king. A satisfying mate on g2 ends the game. Well done Randy!

UPDATE

Please, use the following link to register:

https://caissachess.net/online-registration/index/819

Standings at: https://caissachess.net/live/819 

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We are pleased to announce our first 5 round event starting August 7th and concluding on September 4th.

Entry is free and rounds will start each Friday at 7:10 p.m. The games will be 25 minute + 10 sec. with two games against the same opponent per round. Chess.com will be the playing site and chess.com’s rapid ratings will be used.

We will also have a Prize Fund! Overall 1st-3rd is $60/40/30. Best Junior (u16), Senior (60 and over) and Best Female player are all $25 each. Registration ends on August 7th at 5pm. So sign up early!

To join, use the Contact Form to send a message with your full name, USCF ID, and chess.com username before 4pm on Friday, August 7th.

Games will start Fridays at 7:10 pm. To play, please log into the Chess.com Live server a few minutes before the start of the round, and challenge your assigned opponent to a G25+10 game. After the game is finished, play a second game with reversed colors. Finally, download the PGN for both games and email them to sgv.chessclub@gmail.com. Mention the round, players, and result in the subject.

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!

Round 6 was played against Deportivo Español de Buenos Aires of Argentina on 4th of July. Randy Hough, Richard Reid and John Wright played on 3 boards, and the team from Argentina forfeited 2 points.  San Gabriel won with 5.5 points vs. Buenos Aires’ .5.

Featured Game:

“It was an interesting game because he had the Bishop pair. But after I traded off the white-square Bishop, I think my Knight was superior” — John R. Wright

Standings After Round 6

San Gabriel Valley was paired against Club Mariano Moreno of Argentina, a strong team. We’ve discovered many Clubs League players are underrated due to results from the prior week. Several games have resulted in large rating swings–as much as 600 points! Do not underestimate your opponent in Clubs League! Five boards were played, and San Gabriel lost by two games. The following is the 2nd game played on Board #1:

Standings after Round 5

San Gabriel Valley Chess Club earned its first victory in Round 4 when Highland High School Chess Club of Gilbert, Arizona forfeited due to lack of players. This Arizona State AIA Competitor arrived with 2 players to our 5 and forfeited all games. A request was made to Chess.com to not be matched against any High School teams in the future.

Standings After Round 4