Firstly, congratulations to tonight's Winners:

Open Section:     rafcalum
U1350 Section: MerryJazz

It is great to see a new winner in the U1350 section, so very well played to MerryJazz for winning this event for the first time.  In the Open section, victory went to rafcalum, winning his second event following his previous win in the Fish n' Chips Friday tournament.

Good evening all.  Today we tried running two tournaments alongside each other and I think it went very well.  I had expected to have fewer in the Open section and more in the U1350 section, but I was delighted that so many opted for the open section.

U1350 Section
This section finished faster than expected.  It was intended to be 4 rounds and it may be that I made it 3 by mistake, or it maybe that the computer changed this due to a the number of players.  We will try 4 rounds again on Tuesday and we will see if we get 4 rounds.

The results...
Very well played to MeanCactus, winning a first SJC tournament on ChessKid.  Congratulations also to BentHuskyBullfrog in 2nd, and AbleLopsidedGiraffe in third place.

What a strange week - back to school, but staying at home.  I hope it is working out for everyone.  With regards to this week's chess, I set it up with 5 rounds of 10 minutes, but I think that did cause some people time trouble, so my apologies for that.  Wed will go back to slightly longer games on Friday when we will try two sections - one for the stronger players and one for the weaker players.

This week there was a stunning game in Round two between FlatUpbeatFalcon and LeftGroovyUnicorn.  To have a look through the game you can see it here - https://www.chesskid.com/fastchess/game/24068538 - although you will need an account with ChessKid.  This week, we have a really interesting and complicated Position of the Week  which is shown below with Black to Play at Move 13.  Black plays exd3.  The question is whether this wins a pawn or not?  Play continued with White playing cxd3, and then Black responded with Bxd3.  This puts black up one pawn.  This puts black up a pawn, but is there something that White can do with the Knight on e3 or is there another response available for White.  If you have some time, this is a really interesting games to look through.  In case you are wondering, I don't have the answer - I would be very interested to see the thoughts of Suffolk Junior Chess players in the comments section below if you have suggestions.  Just remember to be careful with your identity online as whatever name you enter when commenting will show. 

Game of the Week

This week, Game of the Week is this one between rafcalum and LeftGroovyUnicorn.  As a new member of the SJC club on ChessKid, LeftGroovyUnicorn got off to a flying start in this game, but rafcalum showed the value of hanging on in chess, coming back at the end to save a draw - well played to both.  ChessKid members can view the game here - https://www.chesskid.com/fastchess/game/23920162


That Was The Week That Was on ChessKid

Looking at the last 7 days, well done to Wise Crabby Coconut (75 games), OvalCuteSnail (61 games) and ORichards (37 games) - within the Suffolk club, they have played the most games of fast chess on ChessKid this week.  Congratulations to rafcalum( +375 points) and Precho (+184 points) who have improved their Fast Chess Rating the most.

Congratulations also to UnderstoodPorcupine and RichSmoothPanda who have both improved their slow chess ratings by 200 points.

Within puzzles, the congratulations go to MeanCactus who has attempted 318 puzzles and now has a puzzles rating of 1195 - a full 268 points higher!!!.  Congratulations also to RowanTree and rafcalum who have improved their ratings by 132 points and 120 points respectively.  Congratulations also go to BentHuskyBullfrog for attempting 123 puzzles.

Top of the World - Once again, congratulations to MerryJazz - 4th in the world this week on Puzzle Duel - another amazing performance.

Suffolk Junior Chess Player 2nd in the World!!!

This week MerryJazz won 275 puzzle duels on the Chess website ChessKid.  This put him in Third Place in the world - an outstanding achievement - congratulations - extremely well done!!!  And  - last week - even better - 2nd in the world!!!  Extremely well played.

​
​Checkmate Tuesday - the Results...

Fair Play Award

This week we are awarding a Fair Play Award to... RichSmoothPanda!!!  This player realised that the opponent was experiencing a glitch on the computer and instead of taking an easy win, offered a draw.  Outstanding sportsmanship!!!

Thanks to all who have played this evening.  With 4 rounds of 15 minutes games starting at 6.45pm, it seemed to work well tonight, so this is what we will stick with for a while.  If we get a few more players, we may move to having two sections based on ChessKid rating, which I am sure would be attractive to some and maybe not others, but it means that we can hopefully ensure we have clear winners and also some players can try and win the slightly easier  event where they may find it slightly harder in the higher section.  If you have any thoughts on this, please do email me at suffolkjuniorchess@gmail.com.

Once again, we had 14 players, and I know there are one or two more who we are expecting to play next week.  I have once again been very pleased by the standard of the chess.  This evenings event was won by Rowantree, who had a very good close match close match at the end with Precho.  This game was winner takes all.  Precho played some very attacking chess with the game in the balance.  Rowantree rode his luck to hold off the attack before finding a fork to win Precho's Queen - very well played to both.  The game can be found here by those with a ChessKid login - https://www.chesskid.com/fastchess/game/23657247

Thanks again to all who played, and I hope to see as many players as possible on Tuesday at 6.30pm for a 6.45pm tournament start.

Well played, and Happy Easter!

​Tim

Thank you to everyone who entered this tournament.  We had a total of 14 entrants, which is another increase on the previous week, so a big thank you to everyone who has played this evening.

The results tonight were:
  1st: GlumSuddenBacon
  2nd: ZanyHummingBook
  3rd: RowanTree

For ChessKid users, the results and full crosstable can be found here: https://www.chesskid.com/tournament/chessintheweek-18120/results.  You can look through any of the games and see where you could have done better, or see where someone else won a game.  You will need to be logged in to see this.

And... if you would like to see an interesting game, have a look at this one between theworldoflegend and ZanyHummingBook: https://www.chesskid.com/fastchess/game/23537885

This evening 10 junior players competed in the Friday Night Lockdown Chess tournament within the SJC online chess club on ChessKid.

We are all new to this and are learning as we go.  There have been a number of frustrating glitches.  One of these was solved this evening once we realised that the player had ChessKid open in more than one window on the computer.  I suspect that this caused confusion at the website and was the cause of this glitch.  I would suggest that players should make sure they only ever have one ChessKid window / tab open at a time.

But - onto more important matters: the result...

Congratulations once again go to RichSmoothPanda. Who can beat them next week and claim the title?

​https://www.chesskid.com/fastchess/game/23404890
​This week we saw a very clever promotion of a pawn by WiseCrabbyCoconut.  I the position shown below, WiseCrabbyCoconut found a way to get the queen out from behind the pawn - can you see how?

Answer (from move 48) - Rd3 Qf7; Qg4 . After another move by black, white promoted the pawn with check, and after the pawn was taken by the blacks Queen, white took the black queen and went on to checkmate 4 moves later. Very well played.  If you want to see the game, try following the following link once you have signed in.  https://www.chesskid.com/fastchess/game/23404890