A quick reminder about our three online tournaments –
Tomorrow at 7:30, we have a 20-minute hyperbullet tournament (30 seconds each) – you can enter here.
The main event then starts at 8pm, with a 90-minute blitz (5+3) tournament here. It’s the same password as last week in both cases.
And we still have a couple of places left in our gameknot club championships here – just send me your user name for an invite.
In line with recent government announcements, the Leinster leagues have been postponed, and the club will remain closed, until 19th April.
The link for next week’s blitz is here. Password to enter is the same. Only difference is it’s now a 90 minute tournament, from 8 to 9:30.
We’ve also added an hyperbullet tournament at 7:30 for 20 minutes, which is here, and again the password is the same. That then gives a 10 minute gap to rest until the main event!
Finally, the gameknot tournament is now online here – those players who have just joined the site do need to have three wins and six games played before we can invite them.
Mihailo was the winner of our first online blitz, which saw 26 players enter all told. Stephen and John filled out the top three.
Full details are here. I’ve no idea what happened other than that I was steeped to beat Diana in the first round and managed to spectacularly mess up against Mihailo in round 4.
In terms of messing around with format, suggestion seems to be a 90 minute main tournament, and an ultrabullet beforehand. See how it goes.
A quick reminder that our first online blitz will be tonight at the slightly unusual time of 8pm sharp (“Whenever Ciarán arrives wasn’t an option”). We’ve 17 players signed up so far, and there’s others interested as well. The link is here, and drop me a line (before 8!) for the password.
We’ll take any feedback after the event and roll that into next week’s tournament – one early suggestion is that we warm up for the main event with a 15-minute 30-second ultrabullet tournament for example. We’ll also look at getting the gameknot tournament underway as well.
So we have critical mass for the online blitz tournament on lichess.org on Wednesday, and we’ll aim to get that underway at 8pm for one hour. We should have enough for some manner of slower club championships on gameknot as well, but we’ll get the blitz going first and take things from there!
The lichess tournament is here and I’ll send around password for entry.
For the gameknot tournament, there is a requirement that you have 6 completed games and 3 wins before entering a mini-tournament – that may not hold for invitational tournaments, which ours will be, but it’s worth keeping in mind. It may delay your entry into the tournament, but we can easily add you once you have the required games under your belt.
The provisional entry lists for each are below. I’ll add more names as I get them, and will put up details for Wednesday nearer the time.
| Correspondence – gameknot.com | ||
| Player | Rating | Gameknot handle |
| Mihailo Manojlovic | 2100 | |
| Kavin Venkatesan | 2077 | |
| John Healy | 1832 | hippoinamarsh |
| Kevin Burke | 1780 | cdeburca |
| Brendan Cooney | 1617 | norbridges |
| Dave Willow | 1605 | davew50 |
| William Kenny | 1551 | based_bishop |
| Venkat Kandesamy | 948 | |
What a difference a week makes! Last week, we had our charity blitz. This week, we don’t even know when the club will be open again.
So to try stave off cabin fever, we’re going to suggest a few online events, on a couple of platforms as various people will be on different online chess sites. To start, we’re going to suggest a 5+3 blitz tournament next Wednesday at 8pm on lichess.org. This works on the basis of an hour of play, with the site matching you against another player as soon as you finish a game, and the highest plus score over an hour is the winner. If there’s enough interest, we could make this a weekly event, or even include one (or more) in our Blitz Grand Prix.
Over on Gameknot.com, meanwhile, we’re looking at running a slower tournament akin to a correspondence club championship, with a time control of 5 days per move. These tournaments are capped at 11 players each, and a full tournament is 20 games (white/black against each opponent), with a max of four games at any one time, which could easily last a number of months. But we could split the club into smaller groups by rating if needs be, and we could also leave spaces open for players to join later.
Both these sites are free for the limited use outlined above. If you’re interested, post below or drop me a line (with your username if applicable) and we’ll get it underway
In light of Leo Varadkar’s request earlier today that (a) all schools close until 29th March and (b) social interaction be minimised for that period in order to help combat the spread of coronavirus, the club will remain closed for this duration.
The LCU have also recommended that all league games in the period be postponed as well.
If you do find yourself at a loose while all this is ongoing, look on it as giving you time to improve your game! Annotating your games, practicing some endgames or doing some tactics are all good ways of this. There’s some links here on the site.
A reminder that our usual charity blitz will take place this Wednesday, the 11th, with registration from 7:30 and groups to start around 8pm.
With regards coronavirus, at the moment the club will continue to be open on Wednesdays as normal pending either government or ICU advice, or (probably) school closures.
A reminder that the club’s annual Charity Blitz will take place this Wednesday in the library. Registration (and set-up!) is from 7:30, with the group stages underway by 8pm. Entry is €15 waged or €10 unwaged, with all proceeds going to charity (the Simon Community and the Samaritans), and there’s spot prizes on the night too. It’s our usual handicapped time control – starting at 5 minutes each for players with less than 50 points between them and going up to 8v2 for players with more than 250 points between them.
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