2009 Tournament Recap February 7, 2010
Posted by suffernchessclub in Tournaments, chess.Tags: Suffern Chess Club, Champion, Arthur Feuerstein
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I know it’s February already, but as I was making the latest updates to old tournament links, I felt we should take one last look in the rear view mirror to recap 2009 Suffern Chess Club results.
Though we don’t currently have an official “club championship” at year end, it’s pretty easy to figure out who the most consistant player has been once you review the results.
Going back over the 11 Swiss events we had this year, I was surprised to learn that six different people either won or shared first place in the tournaments.
Once again, our unofficial champion this year is Arthur Feuerstein, with an honorable mention to Roger Pedersen who won three tournaments, but often played 2 boards in a given week so everybody would have a chance to play a match.
The official 2009 standings are as follows:
Player Tournament Wins
- Arthur Feuerstein 4
- Roger Pedersen 3
- Gerry Freel 2
- Howard Kushner 2
- David Collins 1
- Dan Zonesburg 1
Suffern Lonely Hearts Club Swiss January 31, 2010
Posted by suffernchessclub in Tournaments.Tags: Chess Clubs, Poughkeepsie, Top 10 Lists, Tournaments, Vassar
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A new tournament will be starting on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010. Feel free to come on out and join the action.
On another note, we’ve made a couple of updates to the site. Per a reader’s suggestion, we’ve added a link to the Vassar-Chadwick Chess Club in Poughkeepsie, NY. The club has a lot of history and gets a good selection of players from the upper Hudson Valley.
Also see a new top 10 list – “Top 10 things people ask me when I tell them I play in a chess club”. Go to the Fun Stuff/Trivia section and let us know if people ask you the same questions!
Stay tuned for new postings in the news section in the next week or two …
Reflections From Aruba January 14, 2010
Posted by suffernchessclub in chess.Tags: Aruba, chess, Philosophy, Vacation
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This was the view from our balcony during a recent trip to Aruba over the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Even though I was on vacation, I made myself a promise that I would take an hour each day to read from my chess book with the hope of improving my opening repertoire.
As I reflect back on 2009, I know I had some successes, but like most chess players who have reached a plateau, I sometimes wonder if my current rating represents the level that I will always be or if I can still learn and move up the ladder somehow.
This surreal experience of studying in paradise, and a recent conversation with one of our regular club members, made me think about appropriate chess based new year’s resolutions for 2010 to avoid any regrets at the end of the year.
1. Prepare for your match against each opponent. If you play in a local club, learn people’s tendencies: What do they play with white and black? Are they aggressive or defensive players? How can you get them to play your game?
2. Learn from your mistakes. As an old boss of mine once said “there’s nothing wrong with making mistakes, just don’t repeat them over and over”. Study all of your games, not just the ones you won. Make a vow not to repeat the same errors over again.
3. Be patient and use your clock efficiently. It’s a problem to play too slow or too fast. If you know your openings, don’t waste time pondering each and every move at the beginning of the game. On the other hand, if you’ve reached the middle game and are in a complex position, don’t rush to simplify if it’s an even game. Take the time to review your options and pick the move that improves your position.
4. Don’t play scared. Even if you play people who are much stronger (or weaker) than you are. Once you are in the middle of the game, play the board – not the man. This isn’t a contradiction of point #1. You can prepare for your opponent, but once the game is underway, your job is to find the plan that suits the position. The minute you become afraid to lose, you will have a self-fulfilling prophecy.
5. Remember to enjoy each game. We’re playing for fun, right? Sometimes after a difficult loss, we tend to forget this. A number of years ago, when our club was in Montvale, we had a gentleman who came every week and only played once in a while. Eventually, he would only come and watch. He saw me lose a number of games, but I kept coming back each week. One day he said to me “I admire your grit. I stopped playing because I would get too upset every time I lost.” I often think about that when I get upset, then I shrug things off and remember, there’s always next week! (I also remember that I’m a much better player today than I was back then.)
Happy (belated) New Year everybody! Best of luck in 2010.
A Day at the Marshall January 8, 2010
Posted by suffernchessclub in Tournaments.Tags: Chess Tournament, Greenwich Village, Marshall Chess Club, New York City
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A couple of times a year, I like to break out of the same old routine at our local club in the suburbs and venture into the city to play with the big boys at the Marshall Chess Club.
Anybody who aspires to be a chess player should get out to the Marshall at least once in their careers. For one thing, the place just oozes history. Located at 23 West 10th street in the heart of The Village, the club looks like any other multi-million dollar NY brownstone! In fact, it’s very easy to walk right by without even realizing you have arrived. The neighborhood is full of interesting sights like the local clock tower and also has numerous restaurants nearby if you wish to grab a snack between rounds.
December 26th, a rainy Saturday afternoon was the ideal time to drive down and spend a day at the club. The unique thing about the open events is that you are guaranteed to see an interesting collection of players of various strengths. I was expecting a smaller crowd, but was surprised to see that 53 players entered the event. Many top players were in attendence and I drew the strongest player, Yury Lapshun (rated 2520) in the first round. That is, he was my “opponent” in the first round – I would have a better chance of hitting a double off of Mariano Rivera than obtaining a draw against a player of that strength!
In any case, I was glad that I attended the event.
The best story of the day however, had nothing to do with chess, but everything to do with the spirit of competition. Right in the middle of Round 3, a half-dozen fire fighters marched into the building in full gear making a ruckus with walkie talkies and loud conversation. We could hear them talking about
an leak and could smell the oily fumes emanating from the furnace. In the meantime, the firemen were trying to determine if there was a danger to the people in the building and were making goofy comments to me like “play pawn to a4″.
The punchline to the story is that despite all the commotion, not one player decided to get up and leave the building. I myself was in the middle of a dogfight against an expert player rated 300 points higher than me and I had a significant time advantage to boot. My only thought was, ”if it’s a small fire, I should still have enough time to complete the match before the flames reach me”!!
I understand that most normal people would leave the building immediately without any prompting, but true chess players are a quirky bunch. Or as one of our Suffern Chess Club members said to me when I told him the story – “You’re right, you wife will never understand …”
The State of the Union December 26, 2009
Posted by suffernchessclub in Trivia, chess.Tags: chess, Corneliu Rubsamen, Hawaii, Mike Sailer, North Dakota, Robert Lau
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As we come to the end of the year, I thought it would be fun to take a look at the state of the US Chess Federation to see how popular the game of chess is across the nation. So, being a marketing analyst by trade, I took a look at the numbers by downloading the December ‘09 crosstable from the federation website (I knew this club director thing would come in handy one day).
So, I found out that there are 21,535 active members and that most of them come from a handful of states. And of course NY has the most chess players, right? To my surprise, I found out that TX has the most chess players! But I was correct in guessing that most players come from a few states. In fact, 48% of chess players come from just 5 states (which means 52% are in the remaining 45 states).
So what does this mean? To be honest, I don’t know!
I do feel that we are lucky to live in the Northeast where it is pretty easy to find a local club and you can play in a multiple tournaments in any given week. To let you know how lucky you are, I did some research on chess in other states in the union. For this article, we’ll take a peek at chess in HI and ND. In the coming weeks, I’ll add new articles on other chess in other parts of the country.
Chess in Hawaii
Believe it or not, according to the December ratings supplement, there are only 11 rated players in Hawaii. I found this hard to believe, so I looked up some local clubs and found that there are a handful of clubs in the area (across all of the islands). Tournament results show that there are two top players out there – Corneliu Rubsamen and Robert Lau.
Robert Lau is a 9th grader with a master level rating of 2266. Back in 2007, he won a gold medal in the North American Youth Championships in Aguascalientes, Mexico in the under 16 division. He recently won the state championship, although for some reason, he did not face Corneliu in any of the rounds.
Corneilu Rubsamen is the head instructor at the Mililani Chess Club, located 17 miles Northwest of Honolulu. He also has a master rating of 2263 and has a number of games featured in the database of chessgames.com. Based on the games I reviewed, he is a fan of the Scotch Game and has had some success with it. The link below shows one of his games in the 2007 Hawaii Open in which he shreds the Sicillian Defence of his opponent. http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1390252
Chess in North Dakota
You’d probably be surprised to find there are any players in North Dakota at all, but there are – 19 of them to be exact. The top player in the ratings supplement is Mike Sailer – a 16 time North Dakota chess champion who likes to play in the North Dakota “Chessnuts” club. http://www.ndchessnut.com
The best part of this story is that the club meets at the downtown Fargo Subway restaurant! They play on Friday nights from 8 pm to midnight and all ratings are based on Game 15 matches.
So the next time you feel that your chess options are limited and that you can’t find friends, relatives, or neighbors who understand your passion for the game – remember it could be worse. You could be living in North Dakota (not that there’s anything wrong with that)!!
Last Tournament of the Decade November 21, 2009
Posted by suffernchessclub in Tournaments, chess.Tags: chess, Quads, Tournaments
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This past Wednesday, we had a change of pace with a Game 30 quad event. We split the members into two groups and played 3 matches in one night. It was certainly an interesting event – and a bit nerve-racking getting used to the 30 minute time limit since we usually play Game 90 events.
In the end, most of us felt that it would be better to focus on our usual format, but we might experiment with some match play events in 2010 – each person would be paired against an opponent of similar strength for two Game 45 matches.
Next week we will go back to the old format as we wrap up the year with the last Suffern Chess Club event for the decade. Come on out and join the fun on Wednesday – you’ll have plenty of time to see your relatives on the remainder of the long weekend!
ICA Fall Open on 10/25/09 October 21, 2009
Posted by suffernchessclub in Tournaments.Tags: ICA, International Chess Academy, Tournaments
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I don’t have time for fancy notes or witty comments, but I just received an email from our friends at the International Chess Academy. They will be holding their first tournament of the season on 10/25 in Hackensack.
Please see the link below for details:
http://www.icanj.net/chess_class_in_nj/ica_chess_tournaments/445/index.html
New Tournament Starts on 10/14/09 October 12, 2009
Posted by suffernchessclub in Analysis, News, Tournaments.Tags: bishops, Chess Tournament, News, Solodovnichenko, Suffern, Tkachiev
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We have a new tournament starting on Wednesday the 14th. After much deliberation, we’ve decided to call it the Suffern “Bishops of October” Swiss.
Of course, that’s not all, the website has been updated with a bunch of new content. Look around for the following items:
- A new post on where to find cool chess t-shirts
- A reader poll asking for your thoughts on where to build out the site
- A link for another grandmaster site – Yuri Solodovnichenko (try to spell that with your eyes closed!)
- New news regarding an uproar at the Calcutta Open
- A new chess problem to solve in the Analysis/Games section
Hope you enjoy it … see you all on Wednesday.
Chess T-Shirts October 11, 2009
Posted by suffernchessclub in Links, chess, jokes.Tags: Cafe Press, Chess T-shirts, Clothing, Endgame Clothing, T-shirts
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So, I had this idea for a new article. Why not search the web and find various sites that sell t-shirts related to chess? Even though it’s a niche product, there must be hundreds of websites with cool t-shirts, right?
Well in the end, after a bit of surfing the web, I did find a few sites. But the truth is, there were only two websites which had merchandise that was worth mentioning, and only one of them had the variety and odd sense of humor that I found appealing. So, without further ado, here are the two sites in question:
Endgame Clothing (www.endgameclothing.com)
This site has shirts for men and women and also has an accompanying blog. Shirts cost $22 each. The blue “horsey” design is the tamest of the bunch. Most of the others have either a “goth” look or a kind of “biker chess” feel to them. The designer’s heart is in the right place, but to me, “tough guy” and “chess player” don’t really go together. That doesn’t mean I’m right or wrong, it’s just not my style.
Cafe Press (www.cafepress.com/chess)
This site offers a variety of merchandise from a ridiculous number of vendors. Their website claims they have 6.5 million members who create, sell and buy T-shirts and other products. They say they’ve been around since 1999 and are based in San Mateo, California.
Most of the shirts on this site also sell for $22 (seems to be the going rate), however what struck me was the sheer variety of content. There are thousands of designs to choose from and the best part is, many of them are funny, others are minimalist ideas that will appeal to fellow chess players, and some make chess seem (dare I say it) … cool.
So if you see me at the club in a few weeks and wonder where I got that t-shirt, it was probably from Cafe Press …
“Fight Club” Parody October 4, 2009
Posted by suffernchessclub in Video, jokes.Tags: chess club, Fight Club, Parody
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For those of you who have seen the movie Fight Club, somebody came up with a very funny parody of it called “Chess Club”. If you look closely, you’ll see they make the common error of setting up the board incorrectly – dark squares on the right hand side, but only a chess geek like me would notice that.
(I never did see the movie, but the funny thing is, I have an idea of what it must be like from this video clip!)
