A new site to check out

A recent visitor suggested trading weblinks. Please check out his site, Chessblog for chessfuns..., which looks good.

(Also, hope all of you are doing well and have time to enjoy some chess. I haven't had as much time to play as I'd like to, but I'm doing chess league again this year.)

Thursday Chess

Thursday chess had a pretty good turnout this week. This is my first post. I havent figured out how to put the games up here that you can output with fritz (like the uschess.org page does). Best I can do is upload an image. So I uploaded an image from Michael Heinisch vs me from yesterday. This wasnt the exact position, but it was something like this.

I thought I had the game won (he seemed to think so too judging by his gestures), but he capitalized on a miscalculation I made. Looking at it now with a cool head, I'm not sure I should have resigned when I did, but thats chess.

Both Jeff Chandler and I had skipped first part of the tournament and played just the last game. Jeff played Reed Russel. I didnt get to see the game. Wish I had though. I bet there was some nice fireworks.

Roger Hale played Michael Melander. Michael is somewhat new to the club. Roger somehow beat him with a R & P vs Michaels 2 Qs. I should probably have posted an image of that here.

I was watching Josh Franz play Vince Berg. For a while, Josh had quite a time advantage, but Vince Managed to even it out. The position looked even as well. I thought maybe Vince might have been slightly better, but what do I know. It didnt matter though, because Josh busted a nice piece-winning tactic.

Vince Wisniewski played Norm Myrin. Norm had the white pieces, if I recall correctly. It seemed Norm had the advantage (looking at the post mortem analysis) but made a tactical error.

The last 3 games finished between 11:30 and midnight. I left around midnight. Norm, Vince W, Jeff, and Reed were still there going over Norm and Vinces game.

Was a good night!!

World Chess Live

I was informed by Larry who plays at the Chess Castle that the USCF has an online chess playing service. If you have not looked at it yet, here is a link to World Chess Live.

Is anyone in the Minnesota chess community interested in running this blog?

Hello everyone!

I see that there is still some traffic to this site, but I have not had the time to update this blog.

If anyone is interested in running and updating this blog, please email me at the address listed on my profile.

Thank you and good chess to you all!

Joe

The first year at the new location is coming to a close!

I thought the new location was good for the Castle. So far, we have 49 events listed as being played this year. I was happy to play in five of the Thursday Knighters, which averaged between 15-17 players most months.

I didn't achieve my goal of raising my rating into the next class. In fact, I'm ending the year 39 points lower, but I had a good time playing. Thanks to everyone who runs and plays at the Castle. You are a good bunch who I enjoy spending time with.

I hope everyone has an enjoyable Christmas and New Year!

See you in the next year!

Joe

Tension!!!

At 9:45 p.m., over two hours into round one of the November Thursday Knighter, only one game was finished. Vince Wisniewski played his Alekhine's against an unrated, but strong player.

I was only at move 18 on the Black side of a Caro-Kann, in which my opponent made me work hard. I stepped out of the room for a moment, and when I walked in, found that we were all roughly at the same point...move 16, move 19, move 19, and...move 12?!!! Kevin Landman, a 1500+ player, was playing Black with a strong time advantage against 1900+ Reed Russell.

Roughly an hour later, after I finally resigned, Dennis McGrath finished an excellent game against Steve Turmo with a victory.

Reed was concentrating head down, with just over five minutes left. I was exhausted and couldn't stand any more tension, so I left.

But it was one of those nights where everyone seemed to be playing their best!

John B's team, the Dallas Destiny, won the first round

John Bartholomew blogged about his team's first round win over the Tennessee Tempo in the U.S. Chess League.

Tags: US Chess League, U.S. Chess League, chess, Internet chess