Fabiano Friday

Fabiano? - Fabiano Caruana
This is an Italian chess player who is 27 and he became a Grandmaster at the age of 14 - so a pretty reasonable player, and a good person to name a tournament after.  Although he is Italian, it seems he actually learnt to play chess when he moved to Brooklyn, New York at the age of 5.

According to www.chessgames.com records, he has played the following openings:

Playing as White

• Sicilian - 243 times
• Ruy Lopez - 237
• Sicilian Najdorf - 59
• French Defense - 58
• Ruy Lopez, Closed - 47
• Caro-Kann - 44

Playing as Black

• Ruy Lopez - 139
• Sicilian - 138
• Queen's Pawn Game - 77
• Grunfeld - 72
• French Defense - 59
• Slav - 58

So - what is interesting about that?  OK - it's pretty clear that he likes the Sicilian and the Ruy Lopez.  But I also find it interesting that he has two preferred ways of starting a game of chess, and actually, he plays lots of different openings.  He probably decides what opening to play partly based on who he is playing, and partly on what opening moves his opponent makes.  If he knows that a certain opponent struggles when he plays in a certain way, I expect he will try and play the same opening against him or her again.  And - if he struggles with certain openings, he will study them and improve.

So, what is the lesson from this?  Learn openings - you only have to learn a few moves and you can avoid falling into all sorts of traps.  If you are learning an opening for the first time, then as mentioned last week, two good options are "The Italian Game" and "Queen's Gambit".

If you click on the link below, you can see what openings Fabiano Caruana plays, and you can also then click on a type of opening and then click on individual games and look through them.  This is a great way to learn chess - learn from the GrandMasters.

https://www.chessgames.com/player/fabiano_caruana.html

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Stars, Stars, Stars... and more stars - enough for a small Galaxy!
Why mention Stars?  Why are they important?  MerryJazz has the answers to this question. 39,705 answers to be precise.  At Suffolk Junior Chess, we run our events on a free to use website called ChessKid.  Players have a free login to the website and can play in closed internet based chess tournaments organised by the club, and can also play chess against other players anywhere in the world.  They can also watch videos, have chess lessons, and play lots of puzzles - all on the internet.  It is a great site.  On the website you get stars for playing chess, and also for winning games, solving puzzles, doings lessons, etc.  MerryJazz has somehow managed to accumulate 39,705 stars, and unless you are reading this pretty much immediately after this post is uploaded, he will probably have gained even more stars.  Very, very, very well played.

And now... the Results from tonight's events...

U1300
Congratulations to AbleLopsidedGiraffe for winning this event, especially having also won the event last Friday.  He managed to win all four of his games - very well played.  Congratulations also go to BentHuskyBullfrog, who came second, losing only to the winner, and also to ORichards who came third with 2 wins and a draw.

If you have a ChessKid login, you can see the full results and all the games here: https://www.chesskid.com/tournament/u1300-fabiano-friday-42637/results

Open
It was another win this week for Rowantree.  WiseCrabbyCoconut very nearly pinched the win when he beat Rowantree in the final round, but lost out on tiebreak score.  Very well played - and a great last round by WiseCrabbyCoconut.  theworldoflegend recovered from losing his first round match   to win all his remaining matches and finish in third place, also on 3 out of 4, and he also missed out in the top positions only on tiebreak score.

If you have a ChessKid login, you can see the full results and all the games here: ​https://www.chesskid.com/tournament/open-fabiano-friday-42638/results