Boik 5-0 in Fischer Random

Andrew Boik was unstoppable in the first ever Fischer Random tournament at the Calgary Chess Club. 22 players competed, including some very strong masters like AB Champion Eric Hansen, along with Daniel Kazmaier, and Roy Yearwood.

What was his secret?

He said he tried to transpose into something familiar as soon as possible. Also, if he had a rook on the e or d file, that was usually his opening pawn move. Another tip: play strong moves throughout! He also recommends having a few warm up fischer random blitz games, preferrably against a weaker player, to build up your confidence and get the rules straight for castling again.

Seriously, everyone loved it and we all got to play some interesting positions.

The young kids did excellent, including Yuekai with 3.5, Diwen with 3.0, and Tony Cai with 2.0. Excellent job. Yuekai didn't even have a lost, he was given a 0.5 pt bye for missing the first two rounds and then won all three games! Some players dropped out for the last 3 rounds due to other commitments, while many newcomers joined in.

See you next week for the speed chess tournament.

No Name             Feder Rtg  Loc  Total  1    2    3    4    5  

1  Boik, Andrew           2184 1760 5     14:W 19:W 11:W  6:W  5:W
2  Hansen, Eric           2347 1855 3.5    0:   0:   4:D 11:W  6:D
3  Wang, Yuekai                1339 3.5    0:   0:  12:W 16:W  9:W
4  Yearwood, Roy          2158 1930 3.5   12:D  7:W  2:D  9:D 10:W
5  Shi, Diwen             1395 1306 3      9:L 22:W  7:W  8:W  1:L
6  Kazmaier, Daniel       2236 2029 3      0:   0:   8:W  1:L  2:D
7  Lapiy, Vladimir        1759 1452 3     20:W  4:L  5:L 13:W 17:W
8  Miller, Brian          1869 1646 3     13:W 10:W  6:L  5:L 11:W
9  Pivovarov, Juraj       1976 1671 2.5    5:W 11:L 14:W  4:D  3:L
10 Watson, Walter         1916 1700 2     15:W  8:L  0:D 14:D  4:L
11 Milne, Arthur          1805 1633 2     22:W  9:W  1:L  2:L  8:L
12 Vasilev, Stephan       2118 1636 2      4:D 20:L  3:L 18:W 14:D
13 Wood, Deweese               1071 2      8:L 15:L 21:W  7:L 16:W
14 Cai, Tony              1683 1445 2      1:L 21:W  9:L 10:D 12:D
15 Ong, Simon             1560 1373 2     10:L 13:W 18:W  0:   0: 
16 Snow, Donald           1300 1300 1.5    0:   0:  17:W  3:L 13:L
17 Halwa, Justin          1300 1300 1.5    0:   0:  16:L 21:W  7:L
18 Bowman, Nathan         1300 1300 1      0:   0:  15:L 12:L 21:D
19 Harris, Stephen        1984 1650 1     21:W  1:L  0:   0:   0: 
20 Bentley, Bill          1867 1771 1      7:L 12:W  0:   0:   0: 
21 Cole, Mark             1375 1302 .5    19:L 14:L 13:L 17:L 18:D
22 Daniluk, Jim           2001 1843 0     11:L  5:L  0:   0:   0: 

Fischer Random a big hit

This was the first time ever that the Calgary Chess Club hosted a Fischer Random Chess event and it was a real hit. I think players really enjoyed playing all the strange positions. Positional players were stuck in attacking games, and tractical players had to play positional ones. Almost everyone was out of the comfort level at some point in the evening.

We had 16 players turn out and the only player I remember at 2.0 is Art Milne. He beat Jim Daniluk and then yours truly with almost the full time remaining on his clock. He handled every position like it he'd known it for years.

Please come back next week for 3 full rounds, and if you missed it, come by a little before 7:00 and I'd be happy to re-explain it to you and deal you in. Start time is 7:00pm. Keep in mind there is no fee and there are no rating points at stake. Come down, laugh, enjoy yourself, and rediscover the fun of chess.

Juraj

TD Workshop on Swiss Perfect

Today we had a workshop on using Swiss Perfect, a windows pairing program for chess tournaments.

It went very well, and almost all of the six participants received hands-on experience with the program. We covered some of the difficult things such as importing ratings data from the CFC website, as well as handling bye requests, forced byes, and late entrants and withdrawals. The software ran very smoothly and I think everyone got something out of it.

Thanks to all who attended: Walter Watson, Jim Daniluk, Mark Cole, Stephan Vasilev, Bob Macfie, and Simon Ong. If you're at the club, and have trouble with Swiss Perfect, please ask one of these gentlemen for assistance.

I really appreciate Mark Cole giving me a ride to and from the workshop. We noticed at the last minute that we didn't have the projector and Mark was kind enough to drive home and pick it up. He really saved the day.

Juraj Pivovarov

New Blog for Calgary Chess Club

Managing the news articles for the Calgary Chess Club has been a difficult task.

- It used to be done on the ACA website www.albertachess.org For various reasons, the new ACA website has not been as easy to work with as the old one.
- On the www.calgarychess.com website, it's hard to update and we haven't been keeping an archive of older messages.
- On http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/calgarychess, we've had complaints that you need a yahoo id, and on top of that there are very invasive ads.

A blog seems to solve many of these issues. It's very easy for the Chess Club Exec to keep it updated and is searchable and keeps an archive of older posts. And we can even add photos.

What are our plans for the blog?

The blog will be updated by club executives to keep the membership in the know on Calgary specific chess news. This includes tournament details, notifications of meetings, and general news. (the tournament schedule will still be available on the ACA website as well)

What are our plans for the other sites?

We will still try and keep our tournament schedule on the ACA website. The www.calgarychess.com website will mainly provide our location, hours and links to other sites. And finally, the yahoo groups site is still useful as a newsgroup for people to chat, coordinate rides to out of town events, and post games etc.

Welcome to the new Calgary Chess Club blog.

Welcome

Welcome to the Calgary Chess Club Blog.