Keys and Contacts

The transition period between seasons is when clubs are most likely to change some officers, usually at an AGM to review how the club will best operate. Two new types of key for the NECL web site may be of interest here,
Match Captain – multi-team fixture arranging and result reporting from one login.
General Admin – combines Match Captain and secretary facilities
One of each of the above keys is available to each club, additional to the usual team keys and secretary key. Depending on how your club is organised, this may save someone from logging in and out of different team-captain/secretary keys. All key-types, can of course also enter/edit club ‘internal’ and ‘other ‘game details etc. pertaining to the specific club. Documentation relating to all club keys has been updated and combined into a general admin reference here.

A Couple of Reminders:

  1. Where the person in a role changes, the key-holder can simply pass the key to their successor.  Username, password and assignee can all be set by the key user, so a new owner can simply change and use. Contact admin though if this is not possible  e.g. if previous holder can’t be contacted, key is ‘lost’, or a new role is created – or if a key is no longer required, so it can be cancelled securely.
  2. (secretaries & general admin) Please check that the contact details shown on your NECL club page are correct. Use only the limited distribution fields for email/phone where officers prefer to limit visibility to other NECL officers (only seen via login). Details go into the respective versions of the online directory.
    Restricted email fields also form the officer, club and league-wide ‘mailto’ links used by other officers. Omitting email-addresses here may mean officers missing important emails. Help ensure the right people are contactable.

2013 Peter Keffler Handicap Challenge

Will be held at Clacton club on 14th May 2013 and the following 2 Tuesday evenings.
This competition known as the Peter Keffler Challenge was introduced on Peter’s 80th birthday and has been contested every year since.  All members are encouraged to participate, so please come along for a punctual 7:30pm start when the first pairings of the evening will be made.

N.B. The results of this event will be published here in the club blog pages and NOT in the table of additional member games at necl.org.uk/Clacton.
Due to the handicap nature of this event, these games do not qualify for grading.

Structure
John Lambert recently emailed out an outline structure summarised in the extract below.:-

The event will be the usual handicap with 80 minutes being split between the two players in the ratio of their Jan 2013 standard play grades, the higher graded person receiving the lesser time. All players graded below 99 will be adjudged as having a grade of 60 for this event. ( eg if Phil 160 was paired with Alan 60 then Alan would have 58mins and Phil 22mins).
There will be 6 rounds using the Swiss method of pairing. If a player is unable to attend all three days he will be able to take a maximum of two half point byes but must state these at the outset. A player attending but not paired due to an uneven number of players will receive a full one point bye.
Ties will be decided by playoff in the following week with 40 minute game(s) and times split by grade, but a 4-way tie tie will result in a random draw for semi-final/final on a knockout basis.
Players in each playoff game will toss for colours.

Pairings and Timings
John again volunteered me+laptop for this, so I’ll be using JaVaFo pairing engine, Dutch variant (see here, section C04) – or John will use paper and pencil if we get a power cut!
The table of timings is shown below.  Click on the image for a larger/clearer view.
Your clock time in minutes is found along ‘your row’ under the column corresponding to your opponents seed number. Your opponents clock time is found along ‘their row’ under the column corresponding to your number.

Timings

Updates
14/05/13  –  Ordered Cross Table after Round 2
21/05/13  –  Ordered Cross Table after Round 4
28/05/13  –  Ordered Cross Table after Round 6  –  we have a tie!
18/06/13  –  Presentation of Shield

Chess Whimsies

Two great senior guys from Writtle, Ivor Smith and Jim Howson, kindly collated these 10 challenging chess puzzles.

(Note – the solutions are not necessarily unique)

Q1.

Place the Black King
(1) Where he is stalemated
(2) Where he is mated
(3) Where he can be mated in one move
(4) Where he can be mated in two moves

Q2. White mates in 2

Q3. White’s pieces fell on the floor. Just a King and a Pawn. Place them back in the correct position on the board and it’s White to play and mate in 2.

Q4. White takes back his last move and then mates in two moves.
Watch out for the unexpected.

Q5. A group of experienced players gathered round the board and racked their brains in vain efforts to discover a series of four legal moves from each player (White of course moving first) which could have brought about the position. Can you find the moves which had been played ?

Q6. Place all 16 White pieces on the board in legal positions
(i.e. Bishops on opposite colours and no pawns on the first or 8th ranks)
so that none of them can move.

Q7. At the start of a game, with White moving first and Black copying his
first three moves exactly, how can White mate with his fourth turn?

Q8. If White starts with the moves
1) f3 2) Kf2 3) Kg3 4) Kh4
which first three moves must Black play in order to give mate with his fourth?

Q9. Alphametics involving chess terms are few and far between but here is one.

BISHOP +
BISHOP
————
=   KNIGHTS

There are 10 letters involved in this simple addition sum.
Your task is to find which of the numerals 0 to 9 each letter represents.

Q10. Place 4 queens and a rook on the board so that every square is either occupied or attacked.

Update: 04/01/2013
Need to check your answers? –
Ivor has now released the solutions. You can find them here.

New NECL season

This season will see division three consisting of 7 teams all playing each other twice (a total of 12 matches). I’m hoping this will give members new to competitive chess more opportunities to play. Overall we have 27 teams, down from the 30 of last season.

If you notice a lack of contact or other information on the main site for your club (particularly email contacts for captains) please nudge your secretary and get them to update the page.

If any club is unclear about the ECF funding issue please check. Chelmsford has decided that any player wanting to play for the club or play in the club tournaments must be an ECF member which will make life easier for the club administrators.

Good luck to everyone in the coming season.

 

Brentwood D dropped

Aside

Brentwood have dropped the D Team for 2012-13 season.

After the loss of several members for various reasons it was decided to trim down and reconcile the number of teams. Hopefully the new venue should bring stability to what has been a highly disruptive couple of years and along with it more new members to replace those who have moved on.

Brentwood Chess Club New Address

As of 01/09/2012 Brentwood Chess Club has moved from the Rising Sun to:

Brentwood Baptist Church, Kings Road, Brentwood, Essex. CM14 4DR. Entrance is on Kings Chase and we play upstairs, we can accommodate people who need disabled access but need advanced warning (please contact relevant captain) as there is no lift so we can make arrangements.

We still play on Tuesdays at 7.30pm.