Chess

Most nights we run some sort of organized event.  We hold both club and USChess rated mini tournaments.  Look at our schedule below to see what we have coming up and or join our mailing list to get a weekly(ish) email.

We provide boards, sets and clocks.  You of course are welcome to bring your own equipment.  Remember players can request to play on sets that meet the USChess equipment standards.

Below are some of the types of events we coordinate.  Members can always play casual games.

• Rated Quick Chess – About once a month we hold USCF Rated quick chess tournaments.  If you do not have a USCF membership we usually have a non-rated section.  As the cost is low / free, we promise no prizes but often have a small token prize.
• Multi-week events with slower time controls like our Club Championship.
• Thematic Nights – In the past we have had thematic nights for various openings, gong chess, and bughouse.
• Puzzles and Position Analysis – We occasionally review interesting positions, difficult puzzles, and significant games.
• Organized trips to larger tournaments outside our club.

Why do we run so many Swiss events?  A Swiss or Swiss System is a kind of tournament where players are NOT eliminated.  This way if you lose a game you keep on playing.

Some of our events have different names.  Here are the descriptions.

Big Fish Little Pond.
For the unrated section, the prize is a USCF membership. Only non-USCF member and those who have never been a USCF member are eligible for the prize. We will have a rated section with a prize also.

One vs. Many
We will split the group into 1/3 (higher rated) vs and 2/3 (lower rated). With G25; d5 time control each player in the top third plays 2 players in the bottom third at the same time (e.g. mini-simul)

Swiss (System)
A Swiss System tournament where players are not eliminated and can play every round. When there is a odd number of players, one player receives a bye.

Blitz
A Swiss System tournament where everybody is paired in one section. We play as many rounds as we can during the night. Time control is Game in 5 minutes.

Quads
Players are listed from highest rating to lowest rating and grouped into sets of 4. These four players play a small round robin of three games. The bottom 5 – 7 players are paired as a Swiss System. For our purposes, each quad will all USCF players is rated.

Decrement Blitz
When paired, both players start with 5 min on the clock. After a player wins, the winning player starts the next game, with the same player and one less minute on their clock AND gets choice of color. When a player wins with one minute on their clock, they win that round.

Bug House
Players select their own teams of 2 players. Each team sits opposite the other and one player on each team plays White and Black. A captured piece is passed to your teammate. Instead of a move, a play may place a captured piece on the board. More details to follow.

Mixed Teams
Teams of two pair up against other teams of two. Each team can only have 1 USCF member and USCF members MUST play each other. On the night of the event, any players without a team, will be randomly assigned.

Want to improve your game, take a look at these resources.

How to play the game.  This video teaches you the basic rules of the game.  But that is just the beginning.

Beginners sometimes have trouble finding checkmate.  Thess puzzles will help you recognize checkmate and how to win.  mate in 1

Now move on to some harder puzzles.  Here are 300 puzzles from Chess.com.

Now on to practice.  Playing online is a good way to start to experience chess.  Consider playing at lichess.org.  You can not only play at lichess, but you can also improve your game from their vast resources.  And best of all, it is FREE!

Games:

Manage Your Favourite Games (chessbase.com)

Big Fish Little Pond – 3/14-21/24

Congratulations to Jacob Brandt the winner of 2024 Big Fish Little Pond! As we do every year, the winner, Jacob this year, is now a US Chess member.

Blitz Chess Night – 3/7/24

Blitz chess regularly produces unexpected results and last week was no exception. Emerson, Jusraj, Val and Mike each produced an upset over the four rounds of play. One player remarked after losing on time, “Wow that’s fast.”

After four rounds, Val topped the field with a perfect 4-0. Whit, Johnathan, Asher, and Jusraj all tied for second. You can find all the results via this link.

We also captured three games for review. You can find them on this website. https://share.chessbase.com/SharedGames/game/?p=/Uw2Eezi1/rXxPtNjHWJeypXqopVEvRjEbLHFCOMVu8DZ8nOgplUVQCfBdqwYqFC

Chess 960 – 2/29/24

We hold a Chess 960 event about once a year.  Every year is starts with mixed reviews and by the end many love the idea.  One quote “This makes my brain hurt, but that’s a good thing.”  You can find the final results here.  Select a tournament (swisssys.com)

Daxton managed the only true upset.  Also, we saw a bit of a rematch of the Secrest – Brandt championship match.  Barry put Jacob into one heck of a zugzwang!  You can find the analysis HERE.  If is was black to move, the game is drawn but alas for Jacob, Barry understood how to get the tempi just right.

Championship Shootout and Club Blitz 2/22/24

 Barry Secrest and Jacob Brant squared off to play for the Club Championship.  Barry took the game and the title in a 47 move fight.  Jacob kept things very even until move 16 where the counter intuitive …Nb8 provided best chances.  Secrest also missed a counter intuitive move, 17. Bb1 and allowed things to event up.  Brant decided to hit the bishop with 17… Nh5.  17… Nc5 would have created interesting complications for Barry.

And after that, that was all the advantage Secrest needed.  In the words of Jim Dempsey, “one thing about Barry that makes him so tough is that he inexorably wins his ‘won’ games”!!  Secrest simply pressed and pressed his advantage to a win.

You can find the game HERE!

The rest of us played in a G/5 all in Swiss.

We managed to play six rounds with a total of 20 players.  Steve Badger and Val tied for first place and if you look at tiebreaks, Val came out on top.  Whit, Asher, Johnathan and Pat all tied for 3rd place.

You can find the final results HERE.

A few observations about the results…

1. Stronger players have started showing up.  This is a good thing as it helps us all improve.
2. Pat Whitehurst seems to percolate to the top more and more often.  Ya might want to watch out for him.
3. Jacob Brant made Barry fight and fight hard for his win.  Jacob has his sights set on Big Fish Little Pond night.  If you want that prize, you better come ready to play.

Quick Chess – 2/15/24

What Time Control?  G/5 +10

Last week we shuffled the schedule a bit and held a G/5 +10 +10 time control 3 round Swiss.  This is a bit of an odd time control indeed.

Newcomer Marc Summerfield took first in the Club rated section with a perfect 3-0 score.  Daxton pulled upsets in rounds 2 and 3 but took a loss to Marc in round 1.  Two more newcomers, Asher and Dominic, joined the section as well.

In the US Chess Rated section, Whit scored 3-0 to win the section mostly on an upset in round 2.  Dylan had another upset, a draw against Killmond.  Killmond took revenge in round 2 with an upset over Ranjan and Pat Whitehurst also scored an upset.  BTW, have any of you noticed the Whitehurst has started winning periodically.  Watch out, he’s improving!

We also debuted our new DGT electronic chess board.  This means we have games scores to review in events where the time control is too short to keep score.  The three games from board 1 can be found HERE.

https://share.chessbase.com/SharedGames/game/?p=a0VcpYhEEUHUlyvyRHvlog/fbBVPLkTGNRxkRcrAflWJuZYc7tiQ7p/hYyrOnR41

Club Rated Section Result

US Chess Rated Result

• On SwissSys
• On US Chess

Winners and Results from the 2024 Club Championship

Section winners were no surprise as both Barry and Jacob had full point leads going into round 4.  Jacob paired against Philip Cho in round 4 and Barry drew Chad Siwinski.  With a draw in their games, Secrest and Brandt would have secured their section wins.  Both pressed hard and took home wins resulting in two perfect 4 – 0 scores.

Upsets!

Proving that there is still fight in the final round as Sid Ranjan, James Menefee, and Naomi Hurtado scored significant upsets in the final round.  Also notable, Philip Choe took a clear second place in the Club Rated section.

But enough of my blather.
Here you can find the games.

Here you can find the final wall charts.

Dual Rated 3 Round Swiss 10/19 to 11/2

After three weeks of G/40+10 in two sections we have our winners.

US Chess Rated Section

Whit Weber took 1st place over a field of 13 players.  In the end, Weber and Siwinski finished with perfect scores however Whit edged Chad out on tiebreak points.  The US Chess results are on the US Chess website here.

On his way to sharing first place, Chad upset Sid Ranjan.  Ranjan also took it on the chin against Kromm in the final round.  You can find Kromm v Ranjan here. But watch out for Sid “Fire’n’Ice” Ranjan as he has a tendency to put a hurtin’ on strong players regularly.

Club Rated Section

Four players shared 1st place in a field of 14.  Vanegas edged out McEndree, Soriano, and Burnet on tie breaks.  Results for this section can be found here.

Dylan Burnett (892) had a breakout performance with a 2-0 result.  Burnett missed round one and we can only speculate on result if he had played in round 1.  Soriano also missed round 1.

ERC Quick 10/12/2023

Quick events remain a staple at the Emmorton Rec Chess Club.  We get a bunch of good games in and it all takes place in one night.  On this night, Jim Dempsey went 3-0 to take the top spot in the club rated section while Whit and Giancarlo both went 3-0 to share first place in the US Chess Rated Section.

You can find the club rated Wall Chart HERE.
And you can find the US Chess rated section results HERE.

Blitz Night 5/11/2023

Usually blitz chess nights don’t provide enough recorded results to make an interesting report but this week was an exception.  We ran two sections as usual.  After the USChess and Club rated sections completed four rounds, the top two finishers in each group moved on to a Quad Blitz Shootout.  The winner had rights to the prize.

In the USChess rated section there were zero surprises.  I mean none.  There were no upsets.  Whit “Princess” Weber finished with a perfect 4-0 record and Val took his sole loss to Whit finishing with a 3-1 record.  These scores qualified them both for the shootout quad.

Ben Larson went on a tear and upset Ethan Leahy right out of the gate on his march to claim the top spot in the section.  His only stumbling block was Jim Dempsey in the final round.

In round two, Jim Dempsey misplaced his king on the board causing an illegal move and Brian Fox wasted no time claiming a win.  In true Gary Kasparov style, Dempsey took his disappointment out on the following two players.  Dempsey’s 3-1 record qualified him too for the shootout on tiebreaks.

Ethan’s first round loss hurt him as it cost him a shot at the prize.  It took the third level tiebreak to separate him Dempsey.  Don’t ya just hate tiebreaks?

Two newbies arrived to play in the Club rated section.  Gavin “Pittsburgh” Hope returned after cascade night and Matt McBride arrived to play in round 3

On to the Shootout…

Weber walked through the field untouched and finished with a perfect 3-0 to follow his previous perfect performance.  Jim Dempsey had a clear winning position but Val leveraged his time advantaged and Jim flagged.

All of the results are available on the SwissSys site and the rated results are up on USChess.

Round 2 of G20+30

Upset Upset Upset!

Two weeks ago, Komiljon made perennial favorite Whit Weber work for his win.  This week, Derek Kromm did more than that by nicking the Club Champion for a full point.  For want of a pawn… We saw Derek take a pawn advantage and press it for a win.  We have the game with some commentary below.

Killmond gave Ranjan a run for his money last week.  Unfortunately the score sheet becomes unreliable before the game gets really good.  Stump stumped Gabor (sorry had to do that).  We would love to have the game as the endgame had some nice maneuvers.  Whitehurst held on for a bit however two unforced errors gave Siwinski the advantage he needed for a full point.

Absences in the rated section has left the field with an interesting matchup for the prize.  Unless something odd happens, Ranjan and Kromm should face off in the final round.

In the Club rated section, Allman and Dempsey both prevailed.  Leahy gave Allman an advantage on the dark squares that cost him a piece, and then the game.  No major upsets here.  Allman will bow out of the section to keep the numbers even, making predicting round three pairings near impossible.

Final round fireworks are this Thursday at 7:00!

Round 1 of G20+30

We saw some good games last week.  Most notable were the Weber v Rahimov and Kromm v Gabor.

Rahimov played very well and kept Weber on his toes however age and guile won the day.  You can see here how Weber gives up a pawn in exchange for an attack.

As for Kromm v Gabor, we now have showing a that score as an unforgiving rook pawn endgame taken too to the end with Kromm ultimately prevailing.

Overall, there we no upsets with an odd distribution of wins for black and white where black had almost all the wins in the USChess section and white had almost all the wins in the club rated section.

G15 – All in One Quick

The results of our blitz event on 3/23

Congratulations to Sid and Steve for winning their sections!

USChess Rated Section: https://www.uschess.org/msa/XtblMain.php?202303233042-17009851

The Club Rated Section:
https://www.swisssys.com/report_viewer.php?upload_file=events/20230323%20ERC%20Blitz%20(Killmond).json&tournament=20230323%20ERC%20Blitz&section=20230323%20club%20rated&report_type=wall%20chart&time_stamp=3/27/2023%20-%2021:01

2/16/2023 Congratulations to Whit Weber Our Returning Club Champion!

Whit and Pat slugged it out with Whit prevailing to retain the club title.  Here is the annotated game.

While Pat and Whit played for the club title, the rest of us played a G5 blitz.  We played WAY too many rounds for a Swiss and we had nine round.

Val came out on top by a half point.  The close packed crowd shows the tight competition.  Results are HERE.

Jan 19 – Feb 9

The Club Championship.  Four Rounds of G60+5 with one round a week.  We have two sections, USChess Rated and club rated.  The winners of each section have a shootout on the following week, Feb 16.

5 Jan – Back to the Grind – G15+3 in a 3 round Swiss

Well it wasn’t a Swiss we had Quads instead.  Find the results HERE.

15 Dec – Casual Chess and Holiday Social

A night of casual chess. and refreshments.  Come on by for a relaxed evening.

3, 10 & 17 Nov – Slower and Colder 3 Rd Swiss

Below are the results form our 3rd Swiss.  Congratulations to Whit and Val for taking the top spot in each of their sections!
G60+5 is a good time control to get into some more serious chess and the games proved that out.  You can also find the USChess Rated results HERE.

27 Oct – A Club Rated King’s Gambit Accepted Thematic

At the last minute we changed things up a bit to a 4 round G10 event to allow everyone a shot at playing two games each with the white and black piecs.  A good thing too as with 16 players, a 3 round event may not have resulted in a clear winner.

There were some serious fireworks with pieces all over the board, busted pawn structures, and exposed kings.  The resounding opinion was, folks do NOT like playing the Kings Gambit accepted.  Let that sink in, most players in the club don’t like this opening.  Hmmm, what could you do with that information?

Not much of a surprise Jim Dempsey, who suggested this thematic night, seemed to fair well by securing a clear second place out of the pack of 16.  Whit managed to end up on top but there were some shaky positions for Whit too.

Not that we should look at ratings too closely, Sanat managed a 150 point increase in his club rating.  Is he a rising star?