Chess for lunch? Pine Ridge Elementary does. Two dozen 4th-graders meet each Tuesday under the guidance of educator Mike Lareau to learn math and social skills. This 40-minute Chess and Cribbage Club merits the attention of the principal Dave Ellis, who himself plays with the children, is experiencing the benefits of this time well spent. Please read the full article by Melissa Slager of the Grand Rapids Press at Mlive.com from 25 March 2004 and find out more about this great idea.



Correspondence games are a good way to discuss what is coming next on the board with your child. Here is one way I introduce this format with novice-intermediate players. The first few moves begin with a “what do you want to do first”—coaching is prohibited in the correspondence games, just as in over-the-board, but teaching the kids to ask good questions is necessary—so we tell the opponent that this is an exhibition game, that the first few moves the question are being asked of the player on our side “what do you want to achieve in the first 7 moves?”, and after that it will be a solo journey—so the opponent knows everything we know, and it is for fun and for education. Then as the moves come, we can do one of two things: go 5+ moves back, and play it OTB from an earlier point (the child can choose black or white), to see what is possible—which helps the youth see the availability of choices, how plans develop, and what different viewpoints do to the vision of the player—or let the child explain to me what she/he wants to do, and I listen without commenting on the choice, but rather restating to them what is said. In the same fashion that psychologists--during consultations with clients--will focus and direct the client’s statements without judging him or her, so do I let the child speak, let that child know I hear and understand, and let him, let her, make the choice. I can make notes on the conversation, to discuss with the player later. I would like in the future to record some of these “action sessions” so parents can hear how it is done. In this way kids can have an experience where an adult listens to the decision-making process, and an adult can observe how that child makes decisions, and later have a record of that time, to use for future events.
And as far as chess goes, the child plays fast and live, and also slowly with that other player, who is aware that it is a learning experience, and perhaps also is doing the same thing.
=======================

Variants:
I am a growing fan of chess variants. Transcendent Chess is a game that can be exposed to older children once they have grown comfortable with the setup of the regular game, just to “cleanse the palate” and give them a new perspective. The difference in the variant is that the backfiles differ both from the regular setup and from each other. A simple version of this is to offer out the question: what if we play with the Indian style of setup, with the king facing the opposing queen (which is how it was done until the mid 1800s in India), and bid to see who goes first? A short explanation: bidding is done by one person offering to play the color of his choice; the opponent can accept, and play begins, or a counterbid can be placed by that person opting to play the color of her choice and giving her opponent one extra opening move.

Use the game as a warm-up for your older students, if you like, and break the routine of learning, so real learning can be done. It will change the way your players, adult or otherwise, approach the board. Asking different questions gets different answers, yes?
========================

For Fihankra Chess Collective on March 27 2004.

Points:

Support local chess events.
Chattahoocheee Chess Club—CVChess.org
Upcoming events:
Third Thursday
Columbus Scholastic Open
April 15 2004
3 SS - 2 Sections: Grades K-12 Scholastic USCF Rated and Grades K-12 Unrated

Prize Fund: In two sections:
Non-Rated: Trophies to top 3
Scholastic Rated: Trophies to top 3

Entry Fee: $7
Free 1/2 point bye any round, must request in advance of previous round.
USCF membership required except in nonrated section.

Third Thursday of every month unless otherwise noted.

Time Control: G/15 minutes
Registration: 5:00 until 5:45 pm Eastern Time
Rounds: 6:00, 6:45, 7:30

CV Chess & Games
5870 Veterans Parkway
Columbus, GA 31909

Questions: Lamar Causey @ (334)291-1220 after 6:00 PM
E-Mail: lam33@aol.com
24 hr. voice mail @ (706)566-9207
www.georgiachess.org

Atlanta April Nonrated Beginners' Open
· Date : 3 April 2004
· Category : Open Tournaments
· Event description
APRIL 3: ATLANTA APRIL NONRATED BEGINNER'S OPEN.
4-SS. G/30 minutes. Open to anyone under 1200/unrated. You don't need a membership to play. Trophies to top 10. Medal to anyone completing all four rounds who didn't get a trophy. EF: $11 by 4/1; $15 at site. Registration: ends at 10:30 a.m. Rounds: 1st round at 11 a.m., then as soon as possible after each round is completed. Info: (404)-377-4400. Enter: Atlanta Chess Center, 3155A East Ponce de Leon Ave., Scottdale, Ga. 30079. NS. NC.

Knights of the Roundtable Renaissance Chess Festival (Stone Mountain)
· Date : 10 April 2004
· Category : Scholastic Tournaments
· Event description
Scholastic Tournament open to all students K-12.
Location: Corpus Christi Catholic Church
600 Mountain View Drive, Stone Mountain, GA 30083

Unrated. Four Round Swiss in 4 sections. Primary (K-3rd), Elementary(4-5th), Middle School(6-8th) and High School(9-12th). Rounds at 10am-11:30am-1:00pm-2:30pm. Awards Ceremony at 4:00 pm. Trophies to top 5 in each section.

Tournament features: Moon Walk, Face Painting, Human Chess Board, GA State Champion/IM-Elect Stephen Muhammad, Food and other Fun Activities.
Entry Fee: $12 by (April 5th), $15 on-site.
On-site Registration from 9-9:30 am.

To register call: Lee Buechele(770) 939-1757 or email leebuechele@hotmail.com
Directions to Corpus Christi: www.corpuschristicc.org/directions.htm

Spring Chess Fest (Stone Mountain)
· Date : 17 April 2004
· Category : Scholastic Tournaments
· Event description
April 17 - St. Timothy Spring Chess Fest (Stone Mountain)
Four Round (non rated) tournament held at St. Timothy School. Open to K – 5. 4 rounds, G/20, Registration 9:00 AM, Rounds at: 10 AM – 11 AM – 12 PM – 1 PM, Awards after last round. Four categories with trophies to top 3 in each category (with minimum of 10 in each category). (Categories are Beginner, Advanced Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced.) Entry Fee: $10 before 04/09/04, $15 after 04/09/04. Food on site.
Email me for more information & forms: GSCHWEIBINZ@peoplepc.com

APRIL 23-25 or 24-25: 35TH SOUTHERN CONGRESS (ACC - Decatur)
· Date : 23 April 2004
· Category : Open Tournaments
· Event description
5-SS, 30/90, SD/1 (2-day schedule Rd. 1 G/90). $$5,450 b/105 maximum, 50% GTD! In 5 sections. Open/Unr.: $600-400-300-200; u2200- $300-250-200. Under 2000: $300-250-200. Under 1800: $300-250-200. Under 1600: $300-250-200. Under 1400: $300-250-200, under 1200- $200. EF: $67 if received by 4/21; $73 at site. Re-entry: $35 (except open).
Bye: all, rounds 4 or 5 must commit before round 2. 3-day schedule: Reg.: ends 4/23 7:15 p.m. Rounds: 7:45, 2-7:30, 10-3:30. 2-day schedule: Reg.: ends 4/24 at 9:30 a.m. Round 1 at 10 a.m., then merges with 3-day. Hotel/Info: (404)-377-4400. Enter: Atlanta Chess Center, 3155A East Ponce de Leon Ave., Scottdale, Ga. 30079. NS. NC. W. Grand Prix Points: 15.

Support “local” chess events—think globally, act locally.
www.iecg.org

· Some stats:
Class tournaments are very successful among our members: between 7 and 12 tournaments start each week. On the average we receive about 50 new entries each week, and added to the people who were on the waiting lists, this makes a total of 80 request to process for building new groups.
Processing of new tournaments::
Web or mail requests are collected and processed on week-ends by Jean-Luc (this may vary from Friday to Sunday).

FIRST STAGE - checking against our member database:
· any unregistered player is anwered in an individual message that provides an introduction to IECG and gives the main entry points to our Tutorial Office
· any suspended member's request is rejected, but an individual message informs him of his situation
· all valid requests are then queued, along with the rating and the date of entry

a excerpt from Thomas Bopp on new members at the newsletter www.iecg.info :

New Members
by Thomas O. Bopp
In November and December (for the period of 11/11/03 through 12/08/03) the IECG welcomed 63 new members, bringing our year to date new membership up to 900.
A Personal Note by the author:
Here in the International E-Mail Chess Group we find physicians, attorneys, computer engineers and designers, farmers, military personnel, retirees, writers, musicians, housewives, bankers, playwrights, taxi cab drivers, the disabled, mechanics, the unemployed, airline pilots, retail workers, the blind, police officers, accountants, fire fighters and paramedics, laboratory technicians, secretaries, actors, warehousemen, dock workers, scientists, nurses, mathematicians, and practically every other occupation that I can think of.
Here in the International E-Mail Chess Group we have members from Greece, Ethiopia, Norway, Russia, China, India, South America, Canada, Australia, Germany, Italy, Great Britain, Yugoslavia, Finland, and I venture to say from practically every country on the face of the earth. And yet the one thing I learn every day about our numerous members is that the love of the game, just for the sake of the game, not just winning or losing, is universal among them all.
There may be political divisions among our members; there may be ideological differences among some of them. But throughout our organization the universality that we all hold together in our collective hands is the love of the game.
Sign up yourself! As this is an international site, you will be asked for only the most basic information. Full name, e-mail address, rating (if applicable), chess-playing years.

www.iccf.com

From the President of International Correspondence Chess Federation:
On behalf of the ICCF Executive Board and our Member Federations, I am delighted to welcome you to these webpages and hope that you will find them interesting and informative. As the official worldwide organisation for correspondence chess, played by post and other forms of transmission ( eg. fax and email), we endeavour to provide a wide variety of tournaments and excellent services.Our aims and our long traditions are to "organise, develop and promote the study and practice of international correspondence chess and, through our activities, to enhance friendship and harmony amongst the peoples of the world, according to our motto "Amici Sumus" (we are friends)". I very much hope that you will join us, and that you will soon be participating in our tournaments!Josef Mrkvička President of the ICCFpresident@iccf.com
ICCF is the International Correspondence Chess Federation. ICCF was founded in 1951 as a new appearance of the ICCA (International Correspondence Chess Association), which was founded in 1945, as successor of the IFSB (Internationaler Fernschachbund), founded in 1928.
Correspondence chess is a type of the world-wide well-known game of chess, which has been played between towns, chess clubs and/or individuals, by using:
· runners and homing-pigeons
· (postal) coaches
· usual postal transmissions like trains and (later) airplanes
· modern ways of transmission like email and webserver.
Some sources say that correspondence chess was already played in the 12th century. Most chess historians doubt whether this is true. In the 19th century chess clubs and magazines started to organize more regular tournaments, national as well as international tournaments. Finally in 1928 the first international league (IFSB) was founded. Aljechin, Keres and Euwe have been well-known enthusiastic correspondence chess players during some periods of their chess career.
ICCF, the present successor of the IFSB, is a federation of national member organizations. At this moment there are world-wide over 60 national member federations with altogether more than 100.000 individual member correspondence chess players.
Most of them are playing several games simultaneously. Some of them are even playing more than 100 games at the same time. Most strong players think that 15 email games at the same time is the upper limit.
In the past postal chess was the most common appearance of ICCF. From 1951 until now 18 finals of the World Championship have been organized. Up till now 16 World Championships have been finished. The present World Champion is Tunc Hamarat (AUT).
All his predecessors were also well-known chess personalities: Cecil Purdy (AUS), Vyacheslav Ragozin (USSR), Albert O’Kelly de Galway (BEL), Vladimir Sagorowski (USSR), Hans Berliner (USA), Horst Rittner (GDR), Jakov Estrin (USSR), Jorn Sloth (DEN), Tonu Õim(USSR), Victor Palciauskas (USA), Fritz Baumbach (GDR), Grigory Sanakoev (RUS), Mikhail Umansky (RUS), Tonu Õim (EST) and Gert Jan Timmerman (NED).
ICCF is closely co-operating with the leading world chess organization FIDE. All ICCF titles, championships and ratings are recognised by FIDE.
In most sports you only can play regularly on an international basis when you are a national top-player. One of the charms of correspondence chess (whether you are playing the email or the postal version) is that you can play at an international level, even when you are starting to play this kind of a game for the first time.
ICCF organizes all kind of tournaments: individual and team championships, title norm tournaments and promotion tournaments (from Open Class until Master Class). Both in postal and in email versions.
Almost the same kind of tournaments also exists within the 4 zones into which ICCF is divided: Europe, Latin America, North America/Pacific and Africa/Asia.
· The results of all individual games in all kind of ICCF and zonal tournaments are published regularly in two magazines:
--Chess Mail by Tim Harding
--Fernschach International by Manfred Gluth
Both magazines also contain many games and other interesting articles about national and international email and postal correspondence chess.

(By Nol van't Riet, Former - Deputy President Developments, updated by Josef Mrkvička, ICCF President in January, 2004)



Upcoming events:

Look at www.uschess.org for links to international correspondence play. Note that this is a paid membership-only play site.

====================
Ongoing:àGrandMaster Arno Nickel of Germany is playing 6 different computer opponents in a match sponsored by Computer Schach und Spiele magazine. GM Nickel does not know which computer is which, as their “GameNames” are the names of 6 planets (in the below-mentioned case, Venus). It has been going on since October 2003, and here is one annotated gamescore up to move 18 (as of 27 March they are at move 31), with analysis by GM Nickel:
************************************
NOTE: If the following language looked weird, know that it is another language, “Chessic”, and don’t be alarmed. Just as you do not have to be able to build a car to drive one, please remember that you don’t have to read the chess jargon to enjoy chess. If it intimidates you, skip down to the next part of the article. If all you want to do is play, then play. Remember, this is a grandmaster playing 6 of the toughest computers in the world for money, so his knowledge is going to be exhaustive.

Many thanks to the team at www.chessfriend.com, the sports fans at Computer Schach und Spiele, and the wonderful talent of GM Nickel, who assembled the following text of the game. Also thanks to “Venus”, who is making the most of this challenge.


[Event "CSS-CFC Computermatch"]
[Site "Chessfriend.com"]
[Date "2003.10.01"]
[Round "?"]
[White "Nickel, Arno"]
[Black "Venus (C)"]
[Result "*"]
[WhiteElo "2585"]
[ECO "E20"]
[Annotator "Nickel, A."]
[PlyCount "63"]
[EventDate "2003.??.??"]

{
Nimzo-Indian, Kasparov Variation.
}
1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 Bb4 4. Nf3
{


The Nimzo-Indian Kasparov Variation. Its basic ideas have already partly been

known in the first half of the previous century - see for example some games

of Alekhine in 1938, but only when Kasparov successfully chosed 4.Nf3 as his

main weapon during his WC match 1985 to conquer Karpov's Nimzo-Indian,

systematical test of the knight's move came along. Very often Catalan motifs

(g3 and Bg2) appear on the board, as could already be seen in many games of

Romanishin in the seventies, while he played g3 one move earlier (4.g3).

Kasparov's 4.Nf3 is supposed to be more flexible, as White keeps open some

other options, like e3 and Bd3 and often also Bg5, just depending on Black's

answer. To the nowadays very common move 4...c5 White generally answers 5.g3

as in our game.
}
4... c5
{
Black immediately attacks d4 and tries to disturb the

harmonic development of White's pieces, while he profits of the fact that the

fianchetto g3/Bg2 is a bit time-consuming, not not forget that White has to

take care of his pinned Nc3 on the queen-side.
}
5. g3 cxd4 6. Nxd4 O-O 7. Bg2 d5
{
Black consequently carries on to open the position with aggressive play

just as initiated by 4...c5.
}
8. cxd5
{
The alternatives 8.Qb3, 8.0-0 or even

8.Nc2 seem to me less promising as could be concluded by many games in the

database.
}
8... Nxd5 9. Qb3 Nc6
{
Black's play appears as a unified whole without

any loss of time. In view of this he even does not bother about an isolated

pawn on c6. His queen's bishop will appear later on a tempo via a6.
}
10. Nxc6 bxc6 11. O-O Qa5
{
This move from the incognito playing computer program

"Venus" serves to development, attack and defence at the same time. Now White

has also to reckon with an isolated pawn on c3.
}
12. Bd2
{
*****Black is

probably going to play 12...Bxc3 thus conceding White an option of the

bishop's pair: 13.bxc3 (13.Bxc3 has also be played some times.) As Black may

still select the most promising moves book moves (taking in account human

estimation same as computer evaluations), it is very difficult for me to

reveal my strategy and tactics, without leaving myself in the hands of my

opponent. For the time being I will not say more, that I think to be able to

work out some chances in the course of the upcoming complications, in order to

seize the initiative and - especially against a computer program - to convert

it into an endgame advantage. After all, though bound to defence all the time,

White has managed to make up the delay of his development and thus gradually

going over to counter-attack. In the game Kasparov - Anand, Wijk aan Zee 2000,

followed:
12. Bd2 Bxc3 13. bxc3 Ba6 14. Rfd1 Qc5 15. e4 Bc4 16. Qa4 Nb6 17.

Qb4 Qh5 18. Be3 Be2 19. Rd2 Rab8 20. Bxb6 axb6 21. Qd6 Bf3 22. Qxc6 Bxg2 23.

Kxg2 Qe5
}
12... Bxc3 13. bxc3 Ba6 14. Rfd1 Qc5 15. e4
{
*****Which move will

Venus' opening book play in this position? I expect 15...Bc4, the most played

move in this line, but you never know...
}
15... Nb6
{
Much to my surprise! As I had

mainly checked the more aggressive 15...Bc4, planning to leave the Kasparovian

example not later than move 20 (Qc5 looks better than Bxb6), I did not pay

much attention to the restrained knight's retreat. I found only one game,

where 20...Nb6 was played, but that's a tough one:
15... Nb6 $146 16. Be3 Qh5

17. Rd6 Nc4 18. Rxc6 Nxe3 19. Rxa6 Rab8 20. Qa4 Rb2 21. Re1 Qe2 {

, 0-1;Bacrot,E-Anand,V/Corsica Masters rap rapid 2001 (1). A real masterstroke!

}
}
16. Be3 Qh5
{
***** What now? - We will have a detailed new assessment of

this position with the next update.
}
17. Bxb6
{
White eliminates the

annoying knight in order to get Black's queen-side in his sight and to force

his way into the seventh rank. As the simple recapture with the a-pawn (17...

axb6) would simply loose this pawn, Black has to pin the bishop first, either

by 17...Rab8 or 18...Rfb8. The first rook move leaves the a-pawn without

protection, the second one leaves the rook on a8 in a passive role. In general

White can choose between two plans: a) to trade the queen for rook, bishop and

pawn, while anjoying the more active play, or b) to keep the material balance

unchanged and strive for an advantage in the endgame, attacking Black's

queen-side, entering the seventh rank etc.
17. Bxb6 Rfb8 (17... Rab8 18. Bxa7

Rxb3 19. axb3 {(cf. Ward, p. 121
}
17... Be2 18. Rd6 c5
*


NOTE: If the above language looked weird, know that it is another language, “Chessic”, and don’t be alarmed. Just as you do not have to be able to build a car to drive one, please remember that you don’t have to read the chess jargon to enjoy chess. If all you want to do is play, then play. Remember, this is a grandmaster playing 6 of the toughest computers in the world for money, so his knowledge is going to be exhaustive.

What you CAN do is play through the score and see what you think you would have done, or set up a position in your home computer and play it, see what you can do with it.
*********************************


…more to come…


PLAY THE GAME!




- posted by nasmichael @ 12:12:00 PM