WOB - First 2023 club meeting January 7th

Hello everyone, my best wishes for the New Year, for you and your family!  I hope there was time to step away and relax with family and friends, as we look forward to 2023.

To check if there is a future class cancellation, parents can check calendar.wayoftheboard.org.  

Best regards, Terry
www.wayoftheboard.org
 

Beginner and intermediate program registration

For the beginner (Saturdays 11 AM) and intermediate (Saturday's 12 PM) chess programs, families should register, and then submit payment via website.  
Payment is auto-charged monthly via credit card, and if a family knows they will be missing 2+ club meetings in a month and gives 2 days advance notice I'm happy to refund the fees on a prorated basis.  Do register before January 7th, it makes it easier for me to keep track of fees.  Note club members will have discounted rates for tournaments and private lessons automatically applied, no more discount coupons!  For families who have subscribed, give me a day to process your email so that the discount is applied for tournaments or lessons, unfortunately that is a manual process.

If an intermediate player is no longer able to come because of a family schedule change or other reasons, I have appreciated the opportunity to work with your child/children and hope they continue to explore chess as a social and intellectual activity.  I do recommend they continue to solve puzzles in their workbook, and they are welcome to join us at our monthly tournaments, and/or consider playing in other local tournaments.   

Goals for the intermediate program 

Players in the intermediate program have accomplished a lot in the past year; they've learned the basics  of tactics and strategy and should be familiar with opening principles.  We'll now revisit openings and work through some short games, as in example handout.  I've expanded the club library with books appropriate for their level, and want the players to be eventually be comfortable exploring new and more advanced ideas independently, though books and online resources.  This year's objective for players in this group is to be comfortable playing and annotating longer games by end of year, so that they can play in regional tournaments.  An example of this type of event is the CT Chess State Championships taking place this Saturday in Fairfield (for which registration is still open by the way), or the CT Girls Championship in Greenwich on January 21st.

Goals for the beginner program 

This program assumes the players have no prior knowledge of the game; we'll go through the basics and learn elementary tactics and strategies.  If the players attend club meetings steadily and spend time on workbooks outside of meetings, they should later be able to participate in shorter rated tournaments, and move up to the intermediate program in January 2024. 

Next rated tournament

Our next rated tournament is January 15th, Sunday afternoon at 1:30 PM.  Time controls are G/15 d5; there will be 3 rounds in swiss system format.  I've added a section to the tournaments page so players can see who has registered and and their ratings.  Registration deadline is January 13th, and players can be registered via website.