Want to improve your chess?
Here's a tip: reset your pieces after each game!
What's the logic behind this tip, you may ask? Well, to improve, you have to play more. And what's more tempting than a chess board, all set up and ready to play? How many times have you walked past the board and seen two kings, three pawns and a queen sitting on the board, all the other pieces just sitting there in a clump... you walk by, thinking, I'll play later...
When you reset the pieces after the game, you will find yourself playing more chess! Guaranteed. Then, the more you play, the better you'll get!
Friday, December 28, 2007
Chess Sunday!
Hi Mill Valley Chess Families,
On Sunday, December 30th, we will be attending a chess tournament at the Jewish Community Center located at 6255 N Santa Monica Blvd in Whitefish Bay. This is a 6 round event with a $10 registration fee which is paid on site. Please arrive by 8:30 and awards will be about 4:30. I have attached a flyer with all the information.
There is a K-3 division with three team trophies, five individual trophies and medals to 30th place. The K-6 division will have three team trophies, five individual trophies and medals to 20th place. We will have both a K-3 and K-6 team at this event.
If you can attend please let us know by phone or email (avugames@netzero.net) by 8:00 Thursday evening.
Hope to see you there!
Pam Reese
Mill Valley Chess Club
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Reese Takes First! Magellan Edges Out Mill Valley
Congratulations to Mill Valley fourth grader's Gregory Reese, Jr., who took ALL 6 GAMES in the K-6 division, again (!!) for the Mill Valley Knights. Gregory had some very tough matchups, and had to face Christian Krueger, Brian Dennis and Charlie Burton. Way to go, Greg!!!
In a very close tournament, Mill Valley JUST got edged out by the powerful Magellan Day Schoolers, 17.5 to 17.0... We did very well, and took second place! Besides Greg at 6-0, we had Chris Tillson at 4-2, third-grader Jorin McGuire at 4-2, and Kolton Otterbacher at 3-3. The competition is very tough for K-4 Mill Valley this year, seeing some of its stronger players move from K-3 to K-6. Mill Valley has done extremely well so far this year, and this second-place trophy is one more for the case!
Good job, Knights!
P.S. The USCF Ratings are being used still for the WSCF events. This is new to 2007, and we continue to seek to understand why this is being done. This is not a huge problem in the scheme of things, and CHESS is the most important thing! The boys are having a really fun year with their friends playing the game of Kings.
In a very close tournament, Mill Valley JUST got edged out by the powerful Magellan Day Schoolers, 17.5 to 17.0... We did very well, and took second place! Besides Greg at 6-0, we had Chris Tillson at 4-2, third-grader Jorin McGuire at 4-2, and Kolton Otterbacher at 3-3. The competition is very tough for K-4 Mill Valley this year, seeing some of its stronger players move from K-3 to K-6. Mill Valley has done extremely well so far this year, and this second-place trophy is one more for the case!
Good job, Knights!
P.S. The USCF Ratings are being used still for the WSCF events. This is new to 2007, and we continue to seek to understand why this is being done. This is not a huge problem in the scheme of things, and CHESS is the most important thing! The boys are having a really fun year with their friends playing the game of Kings.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Garry Kasparov- Chess Genius and Political Activist
( from Moscow, Saturday December 8, 2007, The Guardian )
(Thought by many to be the best chess player in history, Garry Kasparov has had troubles recently in his home country of Russia. The article below reminds us that the brains we exercise on the chess board should also be used to stand up for what we believe in, despite the odds. When the other guy gets "109%" of the vote, you know something is not quite right..!)
He has been slammed in jail, frozen off the airwaves, and flattened in last week's elections in Russia. Spare a thought for Garry Kasparov. Not even playing Deep Blue, the computer that famously defeated him 10 years ago, can have been this hard.
Kasparov may have crushed a host of formidable opponents during his extraordinary career as chess world champion, but he is now up against an adversary more ruthless and cunning than any he ever faced across the chessboard.
Last Sunday Vladimir Putin won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections. The president's United Russia party romped home with 64% of the vote and will dominate the new Duma. Kasparov's liberal allies were wiped out.
Kasparov's own role in the election was necessarily limited - first the Kremlin banned him from standing, then had him arrested last week when he tried to lead an opposition march.
After a kangaroo trial, a judge sent him to jail for five days. "It wasn't the greatest experience of my life," Kasparov says. "I won't say I enjoyed it but I was amazed by people's warmth."
The Kremlin claims that United Russia won last Sunday's vote fair and square. Kasparov - the most conspicuous leader of opposition coalition The Other Russia - says the vote was rigged.
He claims election officials manipulated the poll using different methods: old-fashioned ballot box-stuffing, widespread misuse of absentee ballots, and even buses whizzing voters from polling station to station. Kasparov is most incensed at results from the north Caucasus. In Chechnya 99.3% of the population were said to have voted for Putin's party, he says, while in the republic of Mordovia the figure was apparently 109%.
"There was a well-oiled machine to add votes to United Russia. The one technique that was relatively new was forcing people to vote at their workplaces," Kasparov told the Guardian in a phone interview from his home in Moscow.
"I don't think United Russia got more than 40% of the vote. If you look at Moscow and St Petersburg, the results were much lower. It's very clear in big cities ... where information is available they vote differently."
Since retiring from chess two years ago, Kasparov has thrown himself into a full-time struggle against Putin. This can't be much fun. At his last rally in Moscow Kremlin saboteurs played tapes of maniacal laughter when he got up to speak.
Officials suggest he is mad, bad, and dangerous - a western stooge bent on destroying Russia's carefully crafted stability. Kasparov shrugs this off, denouncing Kremlin corruption, falling living standards and the increasingly obscene gulf in Russia between rich and poor.
But his modest rebellion has failed to snowball into any wider uprising against Putin, who is due to step down in March ahead of presidential elections. Last night there was also speculation - denied by the Kremlin - that Putin could become president of a newly merged union between Russia and neighbouring Belarus. So what will Putin do next?
"I doubt anybody in the country knows the answer to this question," says Kasparov. "But I think it's clear there is a fight going on in the Kremlin between different groups."
In particular Kasparov says the clan led by Igor Sechin - Putin's powerful deputy chief of staff - has triumphed over the more liberal Kremlin faction of finance minister Alexei Kudrin. Last month Kudrin's deputy Sergei Storchak was arrested and charged with stealing $43.4m.
The Sechin clan would ideally like to keep Putin in power, Kasparov believes. One possibility is that Putin returns as president in the summer after a brief interregnum, he says.
Despite frosty relations with the west, the Kremlin is not willing to push its luck on the world stage, Kasparov says. "The entire fortune of the ruling elite - their money, assets, families - it's now all in the free world. This makes it very awkward."
He says the Putin regime has elements of Latin American oligarchies, elements of the "Mussolini corporate state" and elements of mafia. What makes it different, he says, is that the trillions earned from Russia's oil and gas wealth has been hidden outside the country. "That's why Putin is getting so nervous: because he would like to go and enjoy life. But there is no guarantee for his safety. It's getting tough. Everybody, including Putin, has too many skeletons in the cupboard."
Kasparov is 44; he is a father; he has a young baby with his wife Daria Tarasova and a lot to lose. He spends thousands of dollars a month on bodyguards and refuses to fly on Aeroflot, the state airline.
With his opinions, is he worried that he could follow Anna Politkovskaya - the investigative journalist murdered outside her Moscow apartment last year?
Kasparov says that, to a certain extent "fame protects me". But he says that he expects the Kremlin to lock him up for longer next time, possibly using a new criminal law "against extremist activities".
He agrees that Russia's new protest movement bears a resemblance to dissidents of the Soviet era, although, he says: "We have a certain window to do things differently. But the problem is the country is sliding backwards. The examples and the fight of those great people inspires us."
From chess prodigy to Putin opponentAn arch-critic of Vladimir Putin, Garry Kasparov is better known as the greatest ever chess player. Born in Baku, Azerbaijan, he was a child chess prodigy who, in 1985, became the youngest world chess champion ever. He remained champion for 15 years, an unprecedented dominance. Kasparov had the highest chess rating ever and suffered only one major defeat, in 1997 against the computer Deep Blue. In March 2005 he retired from chess and launched a democratic opposition movement against Putin. He has been banned from Russian TV and repeatedly arrested, most recently last week while leading a rally in central Moscow. He intends to stand as a candidate in March but is unlikely to collect the 2m signatures necessary.
(Thought by many to be the best chess player in history, Garry Kasparov has had troubles recently in his home country of Russia. The article below reminds us that the brains we exercise on the chess board should also be used to stand up for what we believe in, despite the odds. When the other guy gets "109%" of the vote, you know something is not quite right..!)
He has been slammed in jail, frozen off the airwaves, and flattened in last week's elections in Russia. Spare a thought for Garry Kasparov. Not even playing Deep Blue, the computer that famously defeated him 10 years ago, can have been this hard.
Kasparov may have crushed a host of formidable opponents during his extraordinary career as chess world champion, but he is now up against an adversary more ruthless and cunning than any he ever faced across the chessboard.
Last Sunday Vladimir Putin won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections. The president's United Russia party romped home with 64% of the vote and will dominate the new Duma. Kasparov's liberal allies were wiped out.
Kasparov's own role in the election was necessarily limited - first the Kremlin banned him from standing, then had him arrested last week when he tried to lead an opposition march.
After a kangaroo trial, a judge sent him to jail for five days. "It wasn't the greatest experience of my life," Kasparov says. "I won't say I enjoyed it but I was amazed by people's warmth."
The Kremlin claims that United Russia won last Sunday's vote fair and square. Kasparov - the most conspicuous leader of opposition coalition The Other Russia - says the vote was rigged.
He claims election officials manipulated the poll using different methods: old-fashioned ballot box-stuffing, widespread misuse of absentee ballots, and even buses whizzing voters from polling station to station. Kasparov is most incensed at results from the north Caucasus. In Chechnya 99.3% of the population were said to have voted for Putin's party, he says, while in the republic of Mordovia the figure was apparently 109%.
"There was a well-oiled machine to add votes to United Russia. The one technique that was relatively new was forcing people to vote at their workplaces," Kasparov told the Guardian in a phone interview from his home in Moscow.
"I don't think United Russia got more than 40% of the vote. If you look at Moscow and St Petersburg, the results were much lower. It's very clear in big cities ... where information is available they vote differently."
Since retiring from chess two years ago, Kasparov has thrown himself into a full-time struggle against Putin. This can't be much fun. At his last rally in Moscow Kremlin saboteurs played tapes of maniacal laughter when he got up to speak.
Officials suggest he is mad, bad, and dangerous - a western stooge bent on destroying Russia's carefully crafted stability. Kasparov shrugs this off, denouncing Kremlin corruption, falling living standards and the increasingly obscene gulf in Russia between rich and poor.
But his modest rebellion has failed to snowball into any wider uprising against Putin, who is due to step down in March ahead of presidential elections. Last night there was also speculation - denied by the Kremlin - that Putin could become president of a newly merged union between Russia and neighbouring Belarus. So what will Putin do next?
"I doubt anybody in the country knows the answer to this question," says Kasparov. "But I think it's clear there is a fight going on in the Kremlin between different groups."
In particular Kasparov says the clan led by Igor Sechin - Putin's powerful deputy chief of staff - has triumphed over the more liberal Kremlin faction of finance minister Alexei Kudrin. Last month Kudrin's deputy Sergei Storchak was arrested and charged with stealing $43.4m.
The Sechin clan would ideally like to keep Putin in power, Kasparov believes. One possibility is that Putin returns as president in the summer after a brief interregnum, he says.
Despite frosty relations with the west, the Kremlin is not willing to push its luck on the world stage, Kasparov says. "The entire fortune of the ruling elite - their money, assets, families - it's now all in the free world. This makes it very awkward."
He says the Putin regime has elements of Latin American oligarchies, elements of the "Mussolini corporate state" and elements of mafia. What makes it different, he says, is that the trillions earned from Russia's oil and gas wealth has been hidden outside the country. "That's why Putin is getting so nervous: because he would like to go and enjoy life. But there is no guarantee for his safety. It's getting tough. Everybody, including Putin, has too many skeletons in the cupboard."
Kasparov is 44; he is a father; he has a young baby with his wife Daria Tarasova and a lot to lose. He spends thousands of dollars a month on bodyguards and refuses to fly on Aeroflot, the state airline.
With his opinions, is he worried that he could follow Anna Politkovskaya - the investigative journalist murdered outside her Moscow apartment last year?
Kasparov says that, to a certain extent "fame protects me". But he says that he expects the Kremlin to lock him up for longer next time, possibly using a new criminal law "against extremist activities".
He agrees that Russia's new protest movement bears a resemblance to dissidents of the Soviet era, although, he says: "We have a certain window to do things differently. But the problem is the country is sliding backwards. The examples and the fight of those great people inspires us."
From chess prodigy to Putin opponentAn arch-critic of Vladimir Putin, Garry Kasparov is better known as the greatest ever chess player. Born in Baku, Azerbaijan, he was a child chess prodigy who, in 1985, became the youngest world chess champion ever. He remained champion for 15 years, an unprecedented dominance. Kasparov had the highest chess rating ever and suffered only one major defeat, in 1997 against the computer Deep Blue. In March 2005 he retired from chess and launched a democratic opposition movement against Putin. He has been banned from Russian TV and repeatedly arrested, most recently last week while leading a rally in central Moscow. He intends to stand as a candidate in March but is unlikely to collect the 2m signatures necessary.
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Next Up: Hamilton H.S. December 15th
On Saturday, December 15th, we will be attending a tournament at Hamilton High School that is sponsored by Lannon Elementary School.
The address is W220 N6151 Town Line Road in Sussex. This is a six round event and the registration fee is $10 which is paid on site.There is a K-3 Division with 3 Team Trophies, 5 Individual Trophies and Medals to 30th Place. The K-6 Division will have 3 Team Trophies, 5 Individual Trophies and Medals to 20th Place.
Click here to see the flyer with all the details.
According to Mrs. Reese: Please arrive by 8:30 and awards will be about 4:30. Lunch will be available to purchase on site. If you bring your own, please no peanut products. This is a peanut free event! It you plan to attend please call the Reeses at home, or email them at avugames@netzero.net before 8PM on Thursday.
Hope to see you there!
The address is W220 N6151 Town Line Road in Sussex. This is a six round event and the registration fee is $10 which is paid on site.There is a K-3 Division with 3 Team Trophies, 5 Individual Trophies and Medals to 30th Place. The K-6 Division will have 3 Team Trophies, 5 Individual Trophies and Medals to 20th Place.
Click here to see the flyer with all the details.
According to Mrs. Reese: Please arrive by 8:30 and awards will be about 4:30. Lunch will be available to purchase on site. If you bring your own, please no peanut products. This is a peanut free event! It you plan to attend please call the Reeses at home, or email them at avugames@netzero.net before 8PM on Thursday.
Hope to see you there!
Best Finish Ever for Knights!!!
Mill Valley had its best finish ever this past Saturday at the Port Washington Chess Tournament!
Evan Seghers, Gregory Reese Jr., and Reid Seghers all had 6 out of a possible 6 points to take first, second and third place in the tournament!!! Kolt Otterbacher had 4.5 to take 4th place, rounding out the first place team finish, scoring 22.5 points out of a possible 24! WOW!!!
Great job Mill Valley Knights!!!
Click here to see full results.
Evan Seghers, Gregory Reese Jr., and Reid Seghers all had 6 out of a possible 6 points to take first, second and third place in the tournament!!! Kolt Otterbacher had 4.5 to take 4th place, rounding out the first place team finish, scoring 22.5 points out of a possible 24! WOW!!!
Great job Mill Valley Knights!!!
Click here to see full results.
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Fairview Results
For full results, click here
Mill Valley did a great job at Fairview, taking another 1st place trophy with 15.5 points out of a possible 20. 2nd place was Ronald Reagan with 11.5.
In the K-5, Evan Seghers took 4 out of 5 for 3rd place, Greg Reese took 4 out of 5 for 4th place. Brian Schroeder also took 4 out of 5, and took 6th place. Tie breakers made the difference. Rounding out the K5 team were Chris Tillson with 3.5 wins and Reid Seghers with 3 wins.
The K-3 team also did well, taking 4th place out of 9 teams, paced by Connor Andrews with 2.5 points and Griffin Weber with 2. Cole Miller and John Bennett added 1.5 points apiece.
The WSCF has been a solid organization and has organized many great tournaments. While we still believe that there are some issues with the way ratings are assigned, we are all working together to understand these issues, and to ensure that a fair and equitable environment exists for ALL players so we can return our focus to our children and the game itself - and all the wonderful benefits this game provides to our children and our families.
Mill Valley did a great job at Fairview, taking another 1st place trophy with 15.5 points out of a possible 20. 2nd place was Ronald Reagan with 11.5.
In the K-5, Evan Seghers took 4 out of 5 for 3rd place, Greg Reese took 4 out of 5 for 4th place. Brian Schroeder also took 4 out of 5, and took 6th place. Tie breakers made the difference. Rounding out the K5 team were Chris Tillson with 3.5 wins and Reid Seghers with 3 wins.
The K-3 team also did well, taking 4th place out of 9 teams, paced by Connor Andrews with 2.5 points and Griffin Weber with 2. Cole Miller and John Bennett added 1.5 points apiece.
The WSCF has been a solid organization and has organized many great tournaments. While we still believe that there are some issues with the way ratings are assigned, we are all working together to understand these issues, and to ensure that a fair and equitable environment exists for ALL players so we can return our focus to our children and the game itself - and all the wonderful benefits this game provides to our children and our families.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
K-5 Fighters First at Fairview!
Congratulations to the K-5 Team who took first place today at Fairview! Evan Seghers took third place and Greg Reese took fourth. Several other Mill Valley players placed quite highly. K-3 did a great job with only two players! More details about the tournament to come...
See the game below, where Evan beat a very tough University School student. Gotta love those Queen-King "forks"!! Great job to Evan and the whole Mill Valley team! Parents- send me your notation and I will post your games!
- Assistant Coach Mark Seghers, stuck out of town this weekend.
Congratulations to the K-5 Team who took first place today at Fairview! Evan Seghers took third place and Greg Reese took fourth. Several other Mill Valley players placed quite highly. K-3 did a great job with only two players! More details about the tournament to come...
See the game below, where Evan beat a very tough University School student.
- Assistant Coach Mark Seghers, stuck out of town this weekend.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)