Mate in 2

After the first move there are three different ways to deliver mate depending on how black responds  

July Tuesday Night Swiss results

In his last event John Archibald suffered a cruel blow. He had a good tournament but his rating stopped at 1999. Just 1 point short of the magical 2000 level. John didn’t let this bother him though and came through the event tied for 1st in the Open section with Camden Wagner. John’s performance raised his rating to 2018 well over the 2000 level. He did it the hard way beating two 2000+ rated players in the event. 

Peter Marston won the under section with 4 wins and a half point bye. The strong performance gained him 185 rating points and pushed him over 1500 for the first time. 

The bishop pair

 

Carlson takes Summer Open

Joaquin Carlson took first in Saturday’s Summer Open. He has clearly shaken the rust off from being away at college. Jeremy Berman finished tied for second with Maximus Lu and Rem Yang who both significantly outperformed their expected results. Max picked up 50 rating points and Rem picked up 125. An interesting occurrence happened in the open section with 4 unrated players participating. They all exited with provisional ratings over 1700!  The days when unrated meant 400-600 and they fell for basic opening traps are gone forever. 

Daniel Pineda won the under section with a perfect score. 

Another tactic

White is down a piece but has an advanced pawn on d7. Can white utilize the pawn to get into a winning position?

 

July Big Money Swiss

In its second itteraion we saw another strong crowd for the clubs newest event. We say 59 people sign up for the event which at least in my opinion is the perfect amount for the size of the club.

 The event ended with three players GM Nagi, Mikayel, and Andrew all on 3.5 out of 4 in the open section. GM Nagi ans Mikayel drew each other in the final round while Andrew won his final round game. Of note Jericho Carlson scored 2.5/4.0 to cross 1900 for his first time. 

 Another weekend and another proze for the Zhang sisters as Ella took first in the U1900 section with a perect score. Her strong performance increased her rating 68 points to 1692.

 Zachary Tower took first in the U1500 section. It’s good to see the Thursday Night crew doing well.

Mikayel takes another Friday Night Swiss

Mikayel took the Friday Night Blitz event on July 19th with a score of 11/12. A pair of draws against Zachary Pan is all that stood in his way of a perfect event.

Jianchao takes Big Money Blitz with a perfect score

 Jianchao scored 12/12 in July’s Big Money Blitz event. Mikayel finished 2nd with Andrew and Felix Wu tied for 3rd. The big question now is whether someone can stop Jianchao from doing the double and taking 1st in the Big Money Swiss event on July 20th. 

Interesting website for evaluation

 I have been sharing tactics that I have found interesting. While I will continue to do that I wanted to share a website I came across that might be of interest to lower rated players like myself. 

https://chessevaluationtraining.com/

The website gives you a position, tells you whose move it is and asks the simple question which color is better. It gives you links to the position in lichess and chess.com so you can see the computers take. I thought it was a unique way to practice evaluation skills in positions where material is close. I say it’s for lower rated players as at least in my limited experience one side is always at least 1.5 ahead. So it’s a pretty clear evaluation.  

Sunday Morning Action

After a busy period I am back to blogging about BCC events. 

On Sunday the action came back to BCC with Sunday Morning Action.  Four rapid games to start the day. Nikhil Kalaghatgi took first in the Open section with a perfect score.  Congrats to Carter Z who based on a strong performance finished third and crossed 1900 for the first time in the process.  Daniel Pineda and Dinh Nguyen tied for first in the under section with 3 out of 4