WOB - upcoming tournaments and other news

 Hello all, happy Thursday.  I hope your kids had a good transition back to school, and enjoyed the warm weather we had last weekend.

As mentioned in December, I'm moving away from sending a newsletter every weekend, expect no more than 2 (or possibly 3) a month.

Best regards, Terry
www.wayoftheboard.org
 

Upcoming tournament(s)

For intermediate scholastic players, our next rated tournament is this Sunday afternoon, beginning 1:30 PM.  Signup deadline is tonight, although I sometimes extend it by a day or so.  Parents tend to register right before the deadline, so consider signing up today if your child/children are interested as seating is limited.  Current entries (6 players at the moment) are listed on the tournaments page; due to an odd Google sheets quirk the full list of participants may not be shown if browsing on a mobile device.   To encourage beginning players, I award gold or silver medals to all participants.  There will be an opportunity for parents to take photos after the event.

Next month's rated club tournament will tentatively be February 12th Sunday at 1:30 PM.  I'll see how the players do this Sunday before deciding on format, but it will likely be 4 SS G/15 (4 rounds, 15 minutes for both players to make their moves in a game, winners play winners and losers play losers, no eliminations).  If players are interested in competitive play, parents should consider registering their children for a March 17th tournament at the Norwalk public library, from 10 AM to 2 PM.  The format is 5 SS G/15, so the January and February tournaments at this club will be good practice.  Later in the year, there are regional events which may also be of interest.
 

Knights corner (beginning players)

The past Saturday we had an excellent group for our Saturday 11 AM club meeting.  We discussed how each piece moves, how to check your opponent and how to get out of check, and other basic topics.  The first few months are a good time to start the program; I plan on working with this group until December and players joining later may not have the same foundational skills although I do try to review topics and offer private lessons on weekends.

Families who have chess sets at home often do not have boards with algebraic notation (letters horizontally at the bottom of the board, numbers vertically along the left edge).  It is *not* necessary to buy a new chess set, but if you are interested in getting one, a basic tournament board or one with double or triple weighted pieces are nice and not much more expensive than store retail sets.  They also have extra queens for pawn promotion.  I tend to favor the vendor Wholesale Chess (Amazon link).  Again, it's not necessary to buy a new chess board if you already have one at home.  Either the vinyl boards or stiff wooden/plastic boards are fine, boards made of cardboard tend to fray at the edges after a while.
 

Rooks corner (intermediate players)

Players who have finished the first puzzle workbook should start Al Woolum's "The Chess Tactics Workbook", which starts with basic puzzles such as the first book but progresses to more challenging puzzles and has no introductory overview per chapter.  I have a copy of the workbook for browsing in the club library; parents can purchase online or place an order with Books on the Common for local pickup in a few days.  One of the players finished the first workbook w/793 puzzles over the holidays... well done!

In the Saturday 12 PM program we've begun studying openings, and will continue with this topic for the next few months.  At meetings we'll be looking at and discussing a few example games where the first 10 moves or less are given, and consider how the player making the next move can take advantage of an opponent's unsound move.  I have a binder in the club library where parents can browse through an excerpt of the discussion material, and will email parents of this group the handouts for home review after the club meeting.  Later in the year, we'll explore other important topics and start annotating our games while playing for post-game analysis.