Author: Dennis Mays
VOTE! Support Democracy!
The online chess events have been paused to give you time to vote and follow the election results. Our next event will be Edwin’s Online Quads where groups of 4 players with closer ratings will play a 3-round robin. The first round will be on Tuesday, November 10. You can register here:
New Look for our Website
WFM Jovana Milosevic recently completed her course on web design. She immediately put her new-found knowledge to work by updating our website. Thank you very much Jovana!
In person meetings with Rochester Chess members are still on hold. This situation will likely remain the same until the pandemic subsides. Your membership will be extended without charge by the amount of time the club was closed.
What should you do in the interim? Rochester Chess has held several online chess tournaments on Lichess.org and Chess.com. The most common format is a swiss at a slow time control (G/30+30 or G/60+30). You can register here for the next tournament which begins on Tuesday, November 10. George Paulik and Paul Gabrail won the most recent tournaments with perfect scores (4-0 in the swiss and 3-0 in the quad, respectively).
Master Milosevic is leading a weekly “Online Advanced Chess Class” on Saturdays, noon – 1:30 CDT (soon to be CST). Topics include how to play with different center pawn structures and material imbalances, the importance of centralization, open files and diagonals, and many more. Tuition is $15/class. Send me an email if you are interested in joining the class: dennismays101@gmail.com.
Rochester chess players Matt Jensen and Jesse Buss have created a chess improvement website called ChessGoals. ChessGoals offers study plans that were formed based on study habit data from hundreds of players. They also have weekly blog posts about chess improvement and current events.
ChessGoals – National Master Matt Jensen’s Site Devoted to Helping Players Improve
In case you are not already aware, National Chess Master Matt Jensen has a terrific site: ChessGoals, which is devoted to helping players improve at chess: https://chessgoals.com. Among the great features of the site are experience-specific study plans and guides to online resources. My favorites are the chess stories of individuals describing how they improved at chess.
Contributor Jesse Buss has several recent articles on breaking down chess tactics problems, comparison of online chess sites, and a guide to free online chess resources.
I strongly encourage you to check out Matt’s site. Let me know what you think.