A good turnout last week.  At 5:20, I was still by myself at Pour Jon's feeling like a stood-up blind date but, fortunately, I remembered who I was dealing with and decided to wait until 5:30 before calling it a night.  Sure enough, the players began trickling in and we ended up with five players - possibly a new record for turnout, even without Martin. Although, this may have something to do with Martin still being out of town.  The cat's away so it was finally safe for the mice to come out and play. 

If we decide to use the ranking system, the results would work out this way.  We will try to do a round robin so that each player plays every other player twice before another cycle begins.  Dan Cronin was the big winner with 2-0.

Reviving the Chess Knight blog.

We have a somewhat different group attending chess night these days so I thought we might revive the blog to start some discussion about how to conduct competition.  A couple years ago, we tried pairing off members so that each of us played every one else twice over several weeks.  These games were mostly played on chess night but sometimes were scheduled at the players' convenience. 

We also started a ranking system similar to those used by other chess clubs.  Basically, all players started at an elo of 1100 and gained or lost points depending on win, lose, or draw and the current rankings of the opponents.  Below is the original post explaining in a little more detail.

Let me know if there is any interest in restarting these activities or if you have other suggestions.  At any rate, I will start making blog entries to recap the current week's activities.

Official Kickoff of Rated Play

Thursday, November 13th, was our official start of rated play. In all, five games were played. Martin defeated Rulon in a timed 35-minute game. All other games were untimed - especially the 2-hour-plus game between John and Stephen. It was a back and forth affair which ended, rather anticlimactically, in John stalemating Stephen. After losing to Martin in his first game, Bill narrowly snatched defeat from the jaws of victory when he overlooked a mate in 3 moves against Rulon.

Each player starts with 1100 points and will have points awarded or deducted based on win/loss/tie and the rating of the opponent. A description of the calculation used is included in the weekly spreadsheet. You can access this from the Current Rankings link to the right and download the file. I have a few suggestions as we get started:

1. Games between players do not have to be on scheduled Chess Night. Simply report the game and result to me and I will include it in the rating sheet.

2. New players will start with the same 1100 rating.

3. Players can play timed or untimed games, the only requirement being that both players have to be in agreement.

4. If desired, players can record their games on one of the provided score sheets and give them to me. I will create a PGN file which can be imported into ChessMaster or other chess programs for post-mortems.

Let me know what you think.