The Mechanics Institute Chess Club is organizing an IM norm tournament
from January 2-17 that will give several of the Bay Area’s best players a chance
to fight it out for glory and IM norms. The event includes three Bay Area International
Masters, De Guzman, Odondoo, and Bhat (one of the EBCC’s directors) for the title aspirants
to test themselves against. Those trying for a norm include EBCC director Pruess (who needs
only 1 more norm to get the IM title!), SM Alan Stein, WGM Baginskaite, FMs Thornally and
Lobo, WIM Tuvshintugs, and NMs Aigner, Ho, and Yap. The rounds this Sunday and Monday (Jan 2 and 3)
will be held at the East Bay Chess Club. Sunday there will be three games at noon, and
Monday three games at 11 AM. One game will be held Sunday at 3 PM and Monday at 4 PM.
Spectators are very welcome (it’s free). Please contact us for more information on the schedule.
EBCC December Swiss
SM David Pruess won the Open section with a 4-0 score. The U1700 section was won by
Alan Howe with a score of 3.5. Making his return to the Bay Area tournament chess scene after
a long hiatus while studying at Stanford was NM Jordy Mont-Reynaud, who finished sole second
in the Open section with 3 points. Prizes were also won by Craig Andries, Carl Woebcke, and
Sam Shankland (U1900 in the Open section) and Harold Parker and Csaba Toth (2nd and U1400 in
the Reserve section). 20 players competed in the two day swiss at the East Bay Chess Club.
Our next weekend swiss will be over the Martin Luther King Jr. Weekend and will be 6 rounds.
The most spectacular game from this event that I saw is annotated in the Instructional Section.
Scholastic Quads
These quads saw a nice turnout of 18 players, making 3 quads and one 6 person swiss.
Three players triumphed with perfect 3-0 scores: Austin Lloyd in the top quad, Danny Stoll,
and Devesh Gokalgandhi. The second quad was very competitive: the three winners each
lost a game to one of the other winners, as they finished at 2-1. They were:
Alex Radermacher, John Clara, and Tommy Gonda. Congratulations to all the winners!
Wednesday Night Action
The Wednesday Night action tournament has sprung up again and is going strong.
Turnout has been in the 6-10 player range. In the most recent event, on December 29th,
Joshua Standig made his return to tournament chess after 2 years with a perfect 3-0 triumph.
The first round is starting at 7:30 PM now, with registration accepted until 7 PM.
3 rounds are played at a rate of G/30, or 25 min with 5 second delay. This is a chance
for free rated games for members! Several games from this event are included in this newsletter’s
instructional material below.
Mon and Fri night rated games
Another place you can get a tournament game is Monday at 7 PM or Friday at 8 PM.
Both of these are preceded by lectures (6 and 7 pm respectively).
Let us know of your intention to play at least 15 min before the round please.
GM Norm event in March
The EBCC will organize a very important event in March: a GM tournament!
We will be bringing three Grandmasters to the East Bay for International Masters
from around the U.S. to play against in pursuit of GM norms. This will be a great
event for the area and a good event for U.S. chess more generally, as many of our
IMs have few opportunities to play for GM norms in the US. You can help our club
run this event in a couple ways:
Host a player! This is a great chance to meet and talk with a strong player. By saving on lodging expenses, such events become
eminently easier to run. We would like to have more in the future!
Help relay games to ICC! We will want to show these games on ICC, because it is good for US chess and good exposure for the club. We can show you how to relay games online, and would appreciate a couple volunteers to help us with this.
You could donate some money to the tournament. This will reduce the cost to the sponsor, and thus increase the frequency of such events.
For any help with this event, thanks! It is currently slated for March 13-21, 2005.
