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Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Bits and Bobs

I didn't put up the result from the Elm Mount game, so I'll do that now. 7-1 is not a nice scoreline to be on the end of, here's the scorecard:

We also held a blitz last night. The bad weather may have been the reason for the low turnout, but it was still good fun. Results of the round robin were as follows:

Look out for the LCU Christmas Blitz coming up in a couple of weeks, you can find details on the ICU website and I'll mention it on here again closer the time.

Next post will probably be after the big Kilkenny match, hopefully we'll have some good news.

Stephen

Monday, November 29, 2010

Tournament Tomorrow

We'll be having a blitz tournament tomorrow to get in practice for the upcoming Leinster Chess Union Christmas Blitz in a couple of weeks. Come down if you fancy sharpening up, it's always good fun :)
See you then,
Stephen

Monday, November 15, 2010

Looking to Improve?

Tactics tactics tactics. That's all you need. If you get your tactical sharpness up, you spot opportunities to go for the kill a lot quicker, and patterns that crop up time and again on the board will become easy to see. Chess Emrald is a particularly good site for training yourself in tactics. You create an account so it can track your progess with a rating, then you do a few problems. It quickly gets to understand your standard, and so gives you problems that will just about challenge you. You really do notice your standard getting better and I really can't overstate how handy the site is.

Here's one to get you started, it's a little tricky ;) White to play and checkmate in 2 moves:


Also, club night tomorrow night at 7 as usual. Check the sidebar ==> for directions.
See you there,
Stephen.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

DU -v- Rathmines B

In the Armstrong, we got our second win of the season on Monday night against a good Rathmines B team.
Myself and John had nice wins, Alan and Fabian (super-sub!) had VERY nice wins. Overall, our bottom boards did well against higher rated opposition again which is great to see.

Next Tuesday the club will be back on after reading week. We'll be doing analysis that night. So if you've played a game recently in the leagues for one of our teams, or at home or online or anywhere else, I encourage you to bring it to the club and one of the more experienced players will have a look through it with you. I cannot stress enough how important this is for the player who is looking to improve. Analysing your own games shows you the strengths and flaws in your thinking processes and shows up any blind spots you might have.

If you don't have any games, you can still come down and play as normal, or even sit in on an analysis session for a few tips.

Final random piece of info: this page has been viewed once from Malaysia...just thought that was interesting :)

Till next week,
Stephen.

Friday, November 5, 2010

Blitz!

We held a blitz tournament on Thursday night in the club. Due to the club night being moved, numbers were down, but I think everyone enjoyed the round robin style this allowed us to play. This is how it finished:

The David versus Goliath prize (just pride I'm afraid) goes to Charles for his win over John. Very impressive all round tournament from Charles.

There won't be a club night on next week due to it being reading week for most people, and it'll be back to Tuesday nights from then on. I'll look at having another blitz the week we get back, or maybe the week after.
See you in a couple of weeks,
Stephen

Sunday, October 31, 2010

New time this week

The Armstrong team drew 4-4 with Malahide last week:
This leaves us mid-table, not a bad start to the season.

We'll be having a blitz tournament during our club night this Thursday, not Tuesday. It'll still be 7 o'clock in the maths seminar room.

See you then,
Stephen.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Busy Week

Mixed results last week. The Armstrong team lost 5-3 to Dublin. It was a very close match, 3-3 with 10 minutes in the games left and both games could have gone both ways. The scorecard looks like this:

The Ennis team did brilliantly in their first match, winning 4-2 away against Bray/Greystones. A few debuts in there, making it even more impressive, well done guys! Here's their scorecard:

1. James Vaughan 1412  1-0 T. Conlon 1531
2. Colin Power 1251        0-1 G. Curran 1450
3. John Shanley 1034      1-0 T. Malone 1406
4. Laurence Bergez         1-0 T. Jamowski 1382
5. Diego Lionello             1-0 M. Finnegan 1342
6. Fabian Helm               0-1 E. Wallace 1303


Club night as usual on Tuesday, see you then,
Stephen

Sunday, October 17, 2010

DU -v- St Benildus

Good result last Wednesday night, with the Armstrong team beating a higher rated St.Benildus 4.5-3.5. All the games were very close near the start, slightly better on a few and slightly worse on few boards. A lot of the games went right down to the wire, with some of our players being more than a little lucky in time scrambles. Rory being given a free rook, and Tim winning a free piece so I'm told. After those games finished, the score was 3.5 each with James left playing in a rook and pawn against rook ending. He duly converted, and we'd pulled of what might be considered an upset!

Here's the full scorecard:


We also had a small tournament in the club last Tuesday, here's how it went:
Well done Ziggy!



Both teams have matches this week, so we'll be looking to keep up the good form. Club night as usual on Tuesday. New post sometime after the matches hopefully, with maybe an interesting game aswell.
Stephen

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Welcome!

Hi all,

If you're reading this, chances are you signed up to Chess Soc at some point this week. I'd just like to quickly welcome you to the club, and give a few useful bits of info.

Our first club night will be next Tuesday, 28th of September. We play in the Hamilton building from 7 to 9 o'clock, directions can be found on the right hand side of this page.

We take anyone and everyone. We're happy to teach from scratch, coach players looking to improve, play practice games, blitz/suicide/swap chess, and anything else you can think of. And if you don't know what blitz, suicide and swap chess are, you'll just have to come and find out :)

Hopefully during the year there'll be a few videos, games, and other links of interest going up here, so keep an eye out. I'll get the ball rolling with this one, which I found quite interesting. It's a two part radio documentary including something on computers in chess.

I think that's all I need to say for now. Please do drop in to the club night next Tuesday, we'd love to see you there!

Till then,
Stephen