Sicilian Dragon

In preparation for the upcoming Theme Tournament in celebration of National Dragon Day (Jan. 14), begin by learning from Dereque Kelley.  The Sicilian Dragon will be the starting position of the tournament and players:  1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. c4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 g6 ... with white to move.

2016 Winter Solstice Round Robin Tournament

TOURNAMENT ANNOUNCEMENT

2016 WINTER SOLSTICE ROUND ROBIN CHESS TOURNAMENT

G/15 NO DELAY

NUMBER OF ROUNDS TO BE DETERMINED BY NUMBER OF ENTRANTS

9AM START TIME

SATURDAY  JANUARY 2, 2016

KONA COFFEE AND CAKES

1986 ADDISON AVE E

TWIN FALLS ID

FREE ENTRY

IDAHO CHESS UNION SPONSORED

ROCKY MOUNTAIN CHESS RATINGS

RSVP BY 12/30/2015 TO

MOL64@cableone.net

BARRY EACKER, TD

If you are going with me, I will pre-register you.  Thanks.

Tyson Spellman's Senior Project

Come support Tyson Spellman's Senior Project, the Chess Club's Christmas Blitzkrieg Championship!  8SS G/5 d0, scholastic players welcome, K-12th grade.  Tyson is a senior at SCHS and is hosting the club championship to enhance management and organizing skills while investigating the behind the scenes chess tournament preparations.  We hope that this brings out many chess player's as prizes include a wooden chess board valued over $100!  Next week, he will host the Santa's Bughouse Tournament at SCHS.

Little Black Dress Club Final Report

LBDC Report

submitted to LBDC:  9/5/2015

by:  Adam Porth

This past week ended a very successful chess year for the children of the Blaine County School District, culminating in the annual Chess Rage Day camp.  This report highlights the impact of the LBDC grant ($3000) for the BCSD Chess Club and demonstrates the importance of this after school program that spans all year (even in summer) and engages kids from pre-school to 12th grade and beyond.

LBDC Report
submitted to LBDC:  9/5/2015
by:  Adam Porth

This past week ended a very successful chess year for the children of the Blaine County School District, culminating in the annual Chess Rage Day camp.  This report highlights the impact of the LBDC grant ($3000) for the BCSD Chess Club and demonstrates the importance of this after school program that spans all year (even in summer) and engages kids from pre-school to 12th grade and beyond.

The Chess Club meets every Thursday, 3:30 - 5:30 pm in the Community Campus during the school year.  Attendance at chess club is sporadic and varies from week to week, however the average in attendance across the year was 8.3 kids (not including adult attendance).  The range is broad, 3 - 38 students.  There were 597.6 contact hours with kids during chess club (not including tournaments) over the course of the year because of your support - without any cost to the children.  There were an additional 14,000 contact hours with kids at tournaments with BCSD students!    There were 58 different students that participated in various chess activities, conservatively.  I am not compensated in any way for those hours.

Tournaments demonstrated the importance of competitive play for individuals wishing to enhance their chess skills.  We provided 14 local tournaments and attended 9 tournaments elsewhere.  Local tournament costs varied but were lower than previous years moving from $10-15 to $5 and average attendance was 13.2 students.  The cost of running a tournament is typically $150 and income is far from it.  Running tournaments has always had a deficit with costs always exceeding income and any deficit made up by me personally.   Organizers of the BCSD Chess Rage ensures that every student that wants to play chess competitively may do so without financial hindrances.  Five at risk high school students in particular would not have played in tournaments in Driggs, Salt Lake City, Boise, Twin Falls, and Columbus Ohio were it not that lodging, food, and tournament fees were supplemented with grant money.  Overall, costs for the National High School Chess Championship were nearly a quarter less than previously and BCSD had 5 students participate.

These numbers do not reflect adequately the activity of our chess program as many more students benefited from the various side programs.  Five tournament boards were provided to Alturas Elementary School to help their chess program and touched kids unable to attend chess club or tournaments.  We also produced an Idaho Education Network Chess Class for high school students.  This allowed students from Weiser High School to virtually interact with Silver Creek High School and Wood River High School students in chess matches and instruction.  There were 24 students involved in that class.  Outside help and tutoring from "old guys" from the Idaho Chess Association also enhance the program.

This past week featured 7 high school student counselors mentoring elementary school students in a summer chess camp.  Our program emphasizes the importance of age-integration as it does not matter what age you are, but rather your experience and skills.  We had 18 students participate in this program and 5 were completely scholar-shipped in with no fees charged the students.  One child asked his mom, "Why can't we have camp all summer or instead of school?"

These successes are beyond the “trophies,” but we did a great job earning those as well and for students that are not engaged in other extra-curricular activities, these awards are precious to them.  Only a small fraction (maybe 20%?) of our membership participates in other organized activities.  We were 21st high school team nationally at the U1200 level but 1st place in West Jordan and Drigg’s.  We earned 1st place in the State for the fifth time! And individually our students took home approximately 47 awards/trophies from tournaments.

Our enthusiasm as a club has attracted a few national donors that provided digital chess clocks and chess boards to the chess club.  We are now an affiliate of the United States Chess Federation and can run rated tournaments.  We were provided 50 free premium memberships for Chesskids.com for two months, as well.  To continue that program however will cost us $250/year.  We partnered with the Idaho Chess Association to bring the Girl’s State Championship to Hailey with over 20 girls participating.  Because of this,  Dylan Porth (SCHS), was selected as Idaho’s representative to the National Girl’s Invitational Championship held in Phoenix at the US Open this past month!

The chess program is a valuable extra-curricular program that touches numerous kids in ways that academic accountability drum-beaters are demanding of our educational system.  Our chess club teaches the Idaho CORE curriculum.  We do receive financial support from the school district and rely on the community to continue.  Chess breeds independence and creativity, enhances reading and math scores and understanding, develops confidence and social skills, and many other benefits (contact me for the studies and research).  I hope the LBDC chooses to support us again - I believe this was one of the best years ever.​

Chess.com club formed

Here is a link to join us on chess.com:  http://www.chess.com/groups/home/bcsd-chess-club

News from US Open

After last night's humiliating loss, I was determined to redeem myself. So I won the Thursday Quad and $50 with 2.5/3 points and I won my US Open game tonight. I had the most complex position of the tournament so far. Dylan won in the Open as well. Boy are we tired, chess from 12 pm - 12 am. Last night Dylan got done at 1 am! (we love tournaments!).

Idaho Contestants
Dylan 1.0
Adam 2.0
Carmen 2.0

Yeah for Idaho!

NGIT Short

Dylan did a fine job at the NGIT. "It was very different than other Nationals in that every game was really, really hard," says Dylan. She earned 1.5 points of 6 points. The other two Idaho kids scored 1.0 point, Justin Seik - Barber Tournament, and Nathan Jiang scored 2.0 points in the Denker Tournament. These were the highest rated tournaments ever held for the 3 events with most contestants rated over 1800! Justin Seik earned $100 for the largest upset in his won game. Great job to all and we look forward to next year's successes. Dylan opted to also play in the 6-day US Open which continues 2 games per day against the best. Additionally, GM Alex Lenderman wanted her to be his mixed double partner but "Dad" already had her signed up with him and the USCF wouldn't switch the partners. That would have been very neat and she might have gotten a few lessons off him!

We want a Banner!

Here is a banner that we would like made for our club for special events. We are soliciting donations to pay for the 8ftx3ft canvas banner. Cost: $175. Please help by donating to the BCSD Chess Club. Thanks!

Summer Chess Photo Contest

Did you play chess this summer?  I hope you took a picture . . .send me (digitally) or 8 x 10 picture and enter to win a trip to Nationals!  (Just Kidding - I wish).  You can win a cool chess doo-hickey and a kid's meal from the Powerhouse (Billy is awesome)!  

Eligibility:  picture shows you playing chess somewhere cool, taken summer 2015, send entries to bcsdchessclub@gmail.com.  Winners will be chosen and announced on September 10 at our first chess club meeting at the Community Campus.

Summer 2015 Ending

Hard to believe summer is almost over!  I have chosen tentative dates for this next year's chess tournaments - the entire school year:  https://sites.google.com/site/chessclubbcsd/calendar.

If you know of any conflicts let me know so I can change things if necessary.

News:  Dylan Porth was selected to represent Idaho at the prestigious National Girls Invitational Chess Championship in Phoenix beginning this Saturday.  One girl from each state was selected.  She would love sponsorship so call me if you would like to help in some way (contact me).  She has also opted to participate in the US Open with me!   Very cool.

Dylan will perform a Simul at Java on Aug. 29 to raise funds.  Call me to participate or just show up to play her from 10 am - 3 pm.

Chess Camp:  Aug. 24 - 28 (any sponsors?).  Sign Up (click here).  Here are the participants so far:  

• Darwin Porth
• Leam Van Law
• Quentin Van Law
• Myles Deffe
• Hunter, Luke, and Eric Thompson
• George Corkery
• Bayro Llantoya
• Otto Olson
• Jacob Choma
• Max Albright
• Sebastian and Aleczander Hanks
• River Shepard
• Cade Landon

There is room for more and I beg you to sign up so that I can order the right number of t-shirts and equipment.  Also, I would love folks to pay asap so I can pay for the materials!

chess signups:  https://sites.google.com/site/chessclubbcsd/calendar/join-a-tournament

Need something to do for the summer? Warp time and space!

Visit my blog:  http://growyourowntardis.blogspot.com/

We have moved

https://sites.google.com/site/chessclubbcsd/home

Blitz and Bughouse Results

After our 12 am trek to Boise and then flights all day, bus to the hotel on Wednesday, getting up was very difficult for everyone.  Bughouse was very much a tough proposition with my team moving in slow motion compared to the other teams.  This is a good way to get the nervousness of a tournament dealt with.

Shopping at North Market

Andre and Wesley scored 6.0 points (37th place)
Desmond and Dylan scored 3.0 points (53rd place)

With a brief rest and some food, the Blitz tournament began.  The Silver Creek team was now fully awake and aware of the possibilities.  Desmond and Andre continued to lead our team round-by-round and ended with 6.0 points each (better than last year's results).  In Andre's games, there were some weird occurrences.  One of his opponent's picked up his pawn an moved it backwards and then mentioned a racist comment.  Later in the tournament, Andre saw a TD warning the player about racist comments.  I was taking picture from the balcony of Wesley's game and then witnessed a "slight of hand" by his opponent.  The player moved a bishop one square diagonal to take a piece of Wesley's and then returned it to the original square in one slick movement.  Pressed for time, Wesley did not notice.  Our team went into the last round  in 27th place and had nearly 4 points to gain in order to overtake the 20th team (assuming their team did not earn any points!).  I at least expected us to break the top 25, but we were 2 points behind them.  Desmond won both his games handedly as well as Andre.  Wesley scored 1.5 points and Dylan scored one ending our tournament in 22nd place.  We moved up 5 positions!

Desmond 6.0 points (166th place)
Andre 6.0 points (172nd place)
Wesley 5.5 points (192nd place)
Dylan 4.0 points (273rd place)

Hopefully we will bring one of these home

Desmond, Dylan, Andre, Wesley, and Levi are in Columbus, Ohio enjoying the heavy rain, but more importantly playing the greatest game among the nations finest players. 

Bughouse (a chess variant with teams)

• Andre and Wesley scored 6 points and are 37th in the nation.
• Desmond and Dylan scored 3 points and are 53rd in the nation

Blitz (fast chess G/5) is tonight beginning at 5 pm eastern time. 

Classical (G/120 d5)  begins tomorrow at noonish

I will begin publishing more today and throughout the tournament.

2015 Girls State Chess Champion!

Temiloluwa Aderogba is the 2015 Girls State Champion and will be the Idaho representative for the Susan Polgar invitational Chess Tournament and the National Girls Invitational Tournament!  Temi is a 5th grader at Eagle Elementary School of the Arts and is a newcomer to Idaho and the United States via England.  We are very happy to offer her a warm welcome into the vibrant chess community that Idaho offers. Congratulations!

Here are the results of this fabulous event:

Overall Championship

1st place Temiloluwa Aderogba

2nd place Carmen Pemsler 

3rd place Dylan Porth 

Overall 6-8th grade

1st Amelia Mussler-Wright

2nd Katlyn Genta

3rd Heidi Mungall

Overall 4-5th grade

1st Celeste Hollist

2nd Darci DeAngelis

3rd Alex Schrader

Overall K-3rd grade

1st Machitas Fernandez

2nd Sara Hollist

3rd Veronica Richmond

1st place 12th grade Abby Shiner

1st place 1st grade Audrey Richmond

1st place 2nd grade Simone Williams

1st place 3rd grade Daniela Valencia

Even though there was 21 participants, there were not enough  K, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 grade participants to award those prizes.  Sign up next time so you can be your grade's champion.  Thank you to all the donors, participants, parents, and volunteers to make this one of the best events.

Pictures posted on FB: BCSD Chess Rage

Girls State Chess Championship

Greetings, 

It is so nice to see pre-registrants at this historic event!  On Friday night before the tournament, a free, open blitz tournament will be hosted by the BCSD Chess Rage at the Community Campus at 7 pm.  We have some donated prizes for this event.  

On Saturday, plan to arrive a bit early to double check your registration information.  Remember to request any byes.  

9:00 am - 9:45 am Check-in

9:45 am - 10:00 Welcome (in CC Theater)

10:00 am- Round 1

11 am Round 2

12 pm Round 3

1 pm Round 4

2 pm Round 5 (3 pm for Championship Section)

3 pmish Other Section Awards (CC Theater)

5 pmish Championship Section Awards (CC Theater)

Beginning at 10:30 am, Brooklyn Castle (CC Theater)

12 pm Searching for Bobby Fischer (CC Theater)

2 pm Knights of the Bronx (CC Theater)

Simul by Levi Catangcatang (part of a school project) Ongoing 9:30 am until done.

Analysis by Fred Bartell and Desmond Porth

The BCRD has offered free workout passes.  E-mail to claim ticket (there are only 10!)

Door Prizes and donors:

Java (gift card)

Barnes & Noble (gift card)

The Closet (gift certificates)

Wise Guy Pizza (gift certificates)

Smith Optics ($250 in SWAG)

Chartwells (free drinks to winners)

Snow Bunny (free ice cream to participants)

Mason's Trophies (trophy award donations)

The Coffee House (Discounted drinks - mention chess)

The Wood River Inn (Discounted rates - mention chess)

BCRD (Workout Passes)

This is a great way to celebrate Easter Weekend - See you soon!

2015 National Dragon Day Tournament

January 16th is National Appreciate a Dragon Day and to celebrate, the BCSD Chess Club (under the guise of Silver Creek Dragons!) showed their appreciation with a celebratory tournament.  This is the second year of the tournament which features the Sicilian Dragon opening lines:  1. e4 c5  2. Nf3 d6  3. d4 cxd4  4. Nxd4 Nf6  5. Nc3 g6

Dragon Chess Set as prize

The G/15 0d tournament proved to be a favorite of some of the players as I heard them exclaim, "I love this defense!"  I try to offer theme tournaments in order to expand and challenge players to learn and try new things on the chess board.  The game is meant to be a scientific, hypothesis, prediction, and experiment-ridden smorgasbord of openings, middle game tactics, and endgame strategies.  The kids I work with appreciate my philosophy and our style remains flexible, creative, and fun.

Wesley Brimstein vs. Journey Iverson

The tournament was held in the Silver Creek High School science classroom where I hang my hat most of the time.  Twelve players showed up to play with most of the high schoolers curiously absent due to jobs.  The time proved fun and the tournament started strong for Desmond Porth and it appeared that he was going to stay on top.  G/15 games can take a nasty turn and in the 3rd round, he had an unexpected loss to Otto Olsen.  Otto used time to his advantage and capitalized on Desmond's temporal deficit.  Desmond withdrew and attended a lecture for educators and parents by Daniel Pink.  I was sorry to be missing the presentation.

Wikipedia says, Pink has written five books that focus on the "changing workplace," and that have appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list:

• To Sell is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others
• Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
• The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need
• A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future
• Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself

His articles on business and technology have appeared in The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Wired.  As of 2012, Pink's 2009 talk on The puzzle of motivation was one of the 10 most-watched TED Talks.  In 2011, Thinkers50 named Pink as one of the 50 most-influential management thinkers in the world.

The games continued and Levi Catangcatang, Wesley Brimstein, and Spencer Gaudereau shifted to overdrive.  By round 5 Levi and Wesley were tied for first place (though Wesley had 0.5 point lead in the first tie-breaks).  They agreed to play an Armageddon Match to settle the placement and win the Dragon Chess board graciously donated by Tyler Avila last year.  An Armageddon Match is decisive in that white has time odds and black has draw odds.  That is, white has 3 min. on the clock and black had 2 minutes on the clock.   If black draws then it is considered a win.  Wesley was white and Levi was black.  

Levi Catangcatang vs. Wesley Brimstein

Wesley calmly moved like a machine with constant intervals between moves.  Levi chose a fast opening and then slowed too much to think about some middle game tactics and finally lost on time.  A fun, energizing, and heart-racing end to a tournament.

CrossTable

No.	Name	Pts	Rnd1	Rnd2	Rnd3	Rnd4	Rnd5
1	Brimstein, Wesley	4.0	W5	L9	W3	W6	W4
2	Catangcatang, Levi	4.0	W3	L4	W5	W8	W6
3	Gaudereau, Spencer	3.0	L2	W10	L1	W11	W7
4	Iverson, Journey	3.0	W10	W2	L6	W7	L1
5	Llantoy, Bayro	3.0	L1	W11	L2	W12	W8
6	Porth, Darwin	3.0	W7	W8	W4	L1	L2
7	Enriquez, Froilan	2.0	L6	W12	W10	L4	L3
8	Olsen, Otto	2.0	W12	L6	W9	L2	L5
9	Porth, Desmond	2.0	W11	W1	L8	-U-	-U-
10	Quesnel, Zach	2.0	L4	L3	L7	-B-	W12
11	Quesnel, Skade	1.5	L9	L5	D12	L3	-B-
12	Cross, Kaiden	0.5	L8	L7	D11	L5	L10

Tiebreaks

Place	Name/Team	Score	Solk	CumOp	Cum	MMed
1	Brimstein, Wesley (1)	4.0	15.0	46.0	11.0	12.0
2	Catangcatang, Levi (2)	4.0	14.0	45.0	11.0	12.0
3	Porth, Darwin (9)	3.0	15.0	48.0	12.0	13.0
4	Iverson, Journey (6)	3.0	14.5	43.0	11.0	13.0
5	Gaudereau, Spencer (5)	3.0	12.5	32.5	7.0	11.5
6	Llantoy, Bayro (7)	3.0	11.5	33.0	7.0	11.0
7	Olsen, Otto (8)	2.0	13.5	40.5	8.0	9.5
8	Enriquez, Froilan (4)	2.0	11.0	33.5	7.0	8.0
9	Quesnel, Zach (12)	2.0	8.5	26.5	2.0	5.5
10	Porth, Desmond (10)	2.0	7.0	20.5	9.0	3.0
11	Quesnel, Skade (11)	1.5	9.5	24.5	1.5	6.5
12	Cross, Kaiden (3)	0.5	9.5	25.5	1.5	6.5