Last night we played the 5th and final round of our first online Swiss. Each round the opponents faced each other in two games one with each color and a time control of G25 and a 10 second increment. Most of the games were played on chess.com the rest was played on Lichess.
Here are the final standings:
Our second 5 round double Swiss will start on September 18th. Rounds will start Friday nights at 7.10 pm and the tournament will be held at https://lichess.org. More details will be posted soon.
On Friday, September 11th, we will have a 2h G5+5 event on lichess. If you haven’t already done so, join our lichess team:
Players castling on opposite sides presents imbalances that usually result in attacks at both kings simultaneously. Each move or tempo is crucially important in which side succeeds first. However, one of the Secrets of Chess is that as Black you must first equalize your position before you attack, otherwise your attack will “run out of steam” fast.
In the game below our Dr. Nimzo (aka Chis Stychinsky) decides that his attack is better than Black’s in the Daily Match with the Badgers Brook Chess Club of Broxburn Scotland. Watch how the Doctor writes a prescription for an attack on Black’s king:
The move 12. Ng5 starts an all-in approach toward the attack of Black’s king, while 12…Qa5?! commits Black to an attack on White’s king, but at the cost of separating the Queen from the defense of his own kingside.
Position After Move 19
In retrospect 12.… Bxa2 is an improvement. With White’s 15. g4 he plans to shove the pawn down black’s throat with g5-g6. 16.…Nd7? is an error; better is 16. cxd3. White’s 20. Bh6? is dubious at best, but it does have the aspect of being a strong psychological move (Secret #2!) that must have been a shock to Black. This type of move is much more suited to shorter time limit games. Black is now focused on the defense of his monarch and wants to remove pieces with the regrettable 22.…de4??. However the calm 21.…Qc7!-Qf4 solves Black’s problems. White proceeds with a surgically precise combination with 22. Rhg1! and the stunning Rxd7 from which there is no way out for Black. Way to go Chris!
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!
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!
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 [email protected] 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:
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.
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.
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
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:
