Category Archives: Chess
Gill St. Bernard’s chess team ranked 8th in nation – New Jersey Hills
PEAPACK-GLADSTONE - Gill St. Bernards juniors Peter Horton of Chatham, Akshay Patel of Warren and Tyler Tellalian of Far Hills traveled to Orlando, Fla., from Dec. 2-6 to test their chess technique against the best in the nation at the U.S. Chess Federations National Championship.
The trio secured their spot in the competition after an impressive first place win in the 11th Grade New Jersey Chess State Championship.
Coached by of Ian Prevost, the Gill Upper School computer science teacher and Chess Club faculty advisor, they returned home ranked eighth in the nation.
The accomplishment was impressive considering the lack of meaningful practice opportunities available to the boys during the pandemic.
Like with many extra-curricular activities, face-to-face playing time was limited over the past year and a half, chess competitions were postponed, and the bulk of training was completed online.
Except for playing against members of the GSB Chess Club, the boys had not been exposed to the endurance or concentration required for competitive play.
We prepped for two to three hours each night leading up to the competition, but we could have used more, Patel said. The competition was brutal.
We played two rounds on Friday, three on Saturday, and two more on Sunday, Horton explained. There were over one thousand kids in the room, and each match had the potential to last three hours.
That adds up about to nine hours of chess a day.
The tense hours spent pouring over the board did not dampen the boys spirits, and in fact, it inspired them to want more. All three plan to continue training in whatever fashion they can and hope to return to the national stage again next year and place in the top three.
While the goal may seem ambitious, club advisor Prevost said he believes they have what it takes.
Its been amazing to see how much progress theyve made in the previous two years, he said. Over COVID, they each gained 500 rating points in strength, which places them in the top 5 percent of players their age who are playing online.
The boys are proud of the teams success but are even more grateful to have carried on the GSB legacy.
This is the second time in four years that GSB has been to nationals, said Tellalian. We have a lot of history in chess, and we want that to continue in the future.
GSB last earned a spot at nationals in 2018, and that talented trio, all seniors, returned home with a second place trophy.
Based upon this pattern of success, the boys dream of building a lasting GSB chess dynasty is within reach, and the recent excitement will carry the team well into the next championship season.
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Gill St. Bernard's chess team ranked 8th in nation - New Jersey Hills
Texas university offers full scholarship to teenage Canadian chess star – The Globe and Mail
Paulius Pultinevicius v. Maili-Jade Ouellet, Titled Tuesday, 2019 (See diagram)
Chess is not the first sport that comes to mind when you think of U.S. universities offering scholarships to elite athletes.
But for Maili-Jade Ouellet of Saint-Lambert, Que., it was her prowess at the chess board that caught the attention of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. They offered her a full scholarship to sign up at their campus in Brownsville, Texas.
White has just played Ke3. How does Black continue?The Globe and Mail
It gives me a lot more opportunity to play chess, which is what I wanted, said the 19-year-old management student. Her tuition, accommodations, chess lessons and related travel are all covered by the scholarship.
Ouellet started playing competitively at seven and kept getting better and better. She won the Canadian womens championship at 15, and last year she became just the third Canadian to earn the Womens Grandmaster title from the international chess federation.
Douglas Stoves, associate dean at the university, says Brownsville is a hotbed of chess activity. Their chess team has won the national championship three times.
Ouellet is intent on pursuing chess as a career as long as she keeps improving. But its important to have a backup plan. In her case, it is law school.
Black played 59. Re2+ and after 60. Kd3 Rxe5 (threatening Be4+) Ouellet soon won.
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Texas university offers full scholarship to teenage Canadian chess star - The Globe and Mail
With ‘Chess,’ Country Duo Honey County Offers A Searing Testament To Girl Power – HuffPost
As 2021 winds to a close, Honey Countys Sofie Lynn and Dani Rose are continuing their music industry rise.
On Friday, the Nashville duo unveiled their latest single, Chess. The new track is set to get a major boost later this month when it appears on the Peacock series Yellowstone, which stars Kevin Costner.
Speaking to HuffPost, Lynn said she got the inspiration for Chess after witnessing a bar brawl in California shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic took hold. I just got caught in the crossfire or the cross-fist, if you will but it made for a great story and it made for a great song, she said. And so, here we are.
Rose agreed, calling Chess an ode to female empowerment. She didnt intentionally try to be in the middle of this fight, she just happened to be in the middle sitting there, she said. So we were thinking, if a fight really broke out and somebody came at us, would we cower away? Obviously, we would stand our ground.
Listen to Chess below.
Chess is Honey Countys fourth single this year. When it appears on the Dec. 26 episode of Yellowstone, it will also be the fourth time the series has featured one of their tracks.
Since teaming up as a duo in 2019, Lynn and Rose have made a distinct effort to create a larger space for womens narratives in country music.
In April, the pair unveiled Got It From My Mama, a tribute to their mothers. And last month, they released a holiday-themed cover of Do You Want to Build a Snowman? from the Disney film Frozen, which has won critical praise for emphasizing two female protagonists.
The women see their success thus far as indicative of the country genre gradually becoming more receptive to more diverse artists, and credited Yellowstone music supervisor Andrea von Foerster with offering them a unique platform.
I remember talking to Mickey Guyton just as Black Like Me came out, Rose recalled. She was like, I just had to put out there what I was feeling and I didnt care what people thought about me when I put this out. And I said, Girlfriend, roll with it because its great.
A Grammy nomination later, and things really changed for her over this past year, Rose said. So shes definitely been the role model that were all looking towards saying, She can do it, so can we.
Though they are light on specifics, Lynn and Rose said they expect to unveil new music throughout the early months of 2022. A music video for Got It From My Mama is also in the works, with a release tentatively set for May in honor of Mothers Day.
Citing the Allman Brothers and Bonnie Raitt as influences, the duo hopes Chess encourages fans to put their best foot forward no matter what challenges they face.
If anyones ever underestimated you, this songs for you, Lynn said.
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With 'Chess,' Country Duo Honey County Offers A Searing Testament To Girl Power - HuffPost
Magnus Carlsen Hates the World Chess Championship Format, Apparently – World Chess
While theWorld Chess Championship inDubai continues with aseemingly unending streak ofdraws, Magnus Carlsen, thedefending world champion, has again voiced disdain fortheformat oftheChampionship cycle something he said before andlikely topush forinthefuture.
ANorwegian journalist asked both Nepo andCarlsen about their view oftheChampionship format. Carlsens answer: You have nothing good tosay, its better nottosay anything atall.
Inhis previous comments, Carlsen stated that thesystem is skewed infavor ofthedefending champion, who has totake part inthebiannual match while his opponents must go through agrueling cycle ofquestionable logic that does notnecessarily produce thebest challenger. Carlsens idea toreturn tothesystem that was inplace inthe90s, where theChampion was decided inalarge knockout tournament similar tothecurrent FIDE World Cup.
When this system was used byFIDE todetermine theWorld Champion, it was ridiculed forthefact that it produced random champions, who played well inthat particular tournament butwere notremotely thestrongest players intheworld.
Thecurrent World Chess Championship system, which includes aseries ofqualification tournaments (Grand Swiss, theGrand Prix Series, andtheCandidates) brings substantial revenue toFIDE, thesports governing body, andsupports Carlsens position both inchess andinbusiness. Butits adouble-edged sword: inanunlikely event ofCarlsen losing theMatch, he will face aneed towin theCandidates on demand analmost impossible task even forCarlsen especially if he is out ofform.
Having anannual knock-out World Chess Championship with likely random results will mean that thechampionship title will be slightly debased, giving space totherankings (where Carlsen has been number one formore than adecade).
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Magnus Carlsen Hates the World Chess Championship Format, Apparently - World Chess
Business executive credits chess for honing his analytical skills – The Globe and Mail
Mark Bluvshtein v Veselin Topalov, Russia 2010 (See diagram)
When Mark Bluvshtein thinks about his success in the world of business, he is quick to credit his training as a competitive chess player.
Chess forces me to think one step ahead, he says. It has gotten me to be very analytical in everything I do.
How does White break through against the world's Number 2 player?The Globe and Mail
At 33, he is vice-president of operations for Humi, a Toronto-based firm that provides HR, payroll and benefits systems to small and medium-sized businesses.
Before that, he held several leadership positions with Wave Financial, a one-time startup that was acquired by H&R Block for $537-million in 2019.
Born in the Soviet Union, Bluvshtein moved to Canada at the age of 11 and was soon winning every chess tournament in sight. He became an international master at 13, and the youngest chess grandmaster in Canadian history at 16.
But after his undergraduate degree he decided he didnt want to pursue chess as his career. He joined TD as an investment banker, then got his MBA before applying his analytical skills to increasingly senior roles with businesses.
As for the future, it will be in business and management. But one thing wont change.
I love chess. I still look at chess every day.
Bluvshtein played 24.Nxd6 and after Bxd6 25.Rxd6 Rxe2 26.Rxd8+ Kf7 27.Bxe2 White has a decisive advantage.
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Business executive credits chess for honing his analytical skills - The Globe and Mail
The Armenian Advantage: The Past, Present and Future of Chess – The Armenian Mirror-Spectator
Interestingly, though both boys and girls were playing chess, the most celebrated Soviet Armenian players are men. While there were no Soviet Armenian female chess pioneers such as Georgias Nona Gaprindashvili, Armenian women players were still making strides in the sport. In 1964, Tamara Boiakhchian won the Armenian National Championship for the first time, and would go on to win more Armenian championships for a total of 7 times. Representing neighboring Georgia, ethnically Armenian Varvara Stepanovna Zargarian found success not only in winning the National Georgian Championship in 1938 and 1939, but also by playing in the 1945 USSR Womens Championship. Another ethnically Armenian player, Nonna Karakashyan, won the National Azerbaijan Championship in 1961, 1963 and 1964, and was a member of the Azerbaijani national team for almost a decade. Karakashyan would later come to be a Deputy Director of the Executive Committee of the Armenian Chess Federation after the collapse of the USSR.
Chess in Armenia Today
Much of Armenias chess success continues to this day. Since independence, Armenia has been punching well above its weight, winning the World Chess Olympiad 3 times, and boasting 24 active Armenian grandmasters, 4 women grandmasters, 17 international masters and 4 women international masters; not to mention the fact that Armenian Levon Aronian is the fourth-highest rated chess player in history. Independent Armenia also takes pride in having a woman who is a grandmaster, Elina Danielian one of only 38 women in the world. Danielian, its worth noting, is independent Armenias first European individual champion of either sex.Woman Grandmaster and Secretary General of the Armenian Chess Federation Maria Gevorgyan
So what exactly is it that has driven Armenians to produce such successful chess players in the 21st century? Well, for some players, it starts in the home. In the words of Woman Grandmaster and Secretary General of the Armenian Chess Federation Maria Gevorgyan, in almost every family in Armenia, there is a chess player. WGM Gevorgyan, born in 1994 and a member of the newest generation of Armenian chess stars, began playing chess at the age of three, and when old enough, took classes and began competing more seriously once her talent was discovered. From there on, among her many successes in Armenia and internationally, she placed 3rd in the European Youth Chess Championship in the girls U18 category in 2011, becoming the first female from Armenia in 18 years to win such a title in Europe at the time.
Just like her, children today who are interested and/or talented can go to study chess with a tutor, at a chess camp, or one of the various chess schools and academies in the country. WGM Gevorgyan noted that for younger children, there are many opportunities to take classes and study chess for free. Armenia of course, made history by becoming the first country in the world to mandate the teaching of chess in public school in 2011, though the impact of classes has yet to be fully understood, as the first generation to have taken them is too young to see a result.
As far as other chess infrastructure, Armenia is fortunate to have grandmasters and highly ranked players who coach at chess schools or privately. Youth who have talent typically go to additional lessons where they solve more intense puzzles, learn advanced techniques and work with tougher coaches. In some instances, as early as middle school, players with potential choose to either intensify their chess studies or focus on school. Those who choose the path of chess of course still stay in school but prioritize chess.
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The Armenian Advantage: The Past, Present and Future of Chess - The Armenian Mirror-Spectator
GM Levon Aronian Now Represents the United States – uschess.org
GM Levon Aronian, now a freshly minted US Chess Federation player, at the 2019 Sinquefield Cup. Photo by Lennart Ootes, courtesy of the Saint Louis Chess Club
At the end of February, we reported that GM Levon Aronian was moving to St. Louis, Missouri and the process of officially switching federations was underway. On November 30, FIDE officially informed US Chess that "Levon Aronian, FIDE ID 13300474, has been changed from the Armenian to the USA Chess Federation."
Aronian first made a name for himself by winning the 1994 World Youth Chess Championship. He went on to lead the Armenian national team to three Olympiad gold medals (2006, 2008, 2012) and one World Team Championship gold (2011). Throughout his career Aronian has amassed many individual victories as well, including the World Cup (2005, 2017), Linares (2006), Corus/Tata Steel (2008, 2011), Norway Chess (2017), Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz (2017, 2019) and the Sinquefield Cup (2015, 2018).Aronian is also a world champion in three formats:he is a former Chess960 World Champion (2006, 2007), World Rapid Champion (2009), and World Blitz World Champion (2010).
The U.S. now has three players in the World Top-10: Fabiano Caruana (4), Levon Aronian (6), and Wesley So (8).
Tony Rich, executive director at the Saint Louis Chess Club, tells US Chess, "Levon Aronian's transfer is another sign that chess is thriving in the United States. He is a great ambassador for chess, and we're happy to welcome him to Saint Louis."
US Chess' executive director, Carol Meyer, echoes Rich's comment, saying, "US Chess is thrilled to have a player of Aronian's talents and accomplishments representing us on the international stage."
Aronian's "eligibility date" (the date from which a player can represent the new federation free of any fees) is set as 2023-11-08. This means he can now play chess as a USA player but that there are specific events (mainly FIDE organized events such as world championships or events qualifying you for a world championship event) that he cannot participate in unless he pays the transfer fee to FIDE and a compensation fee to Armenia. Upon payment of those fees he can then immediately represent the USA in those events.
US Chess is in the process of submitting an "Application for Participation in FIDE Event Prior to Eligibility Date" form which will enable Aronian to participate in the FIDE World Rapid and Blitz Championships in December. Levon will be responsible for all fees associated with this process.
Welcome aboard, Super-GM Levon Aronian.
Aronian's FIDE Ratings Card on November 30, 2021.
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GM Levon Aronian Now Represents the United States - uschess.org
International Chess Federation ties up with HDBank for 10 years – Taiwan News
HO CHI MINH CITY, VIETNAM - Media OutReach - 2 December 2021 - Within the framework of President Nguyen Xuan Phuc's visit to the Russian Federation, Ho Chi Minh City Development JSC Bank (HDBank) signed a memorandum of understanding with the World Chess Federation (FIDE) and the Vietnam Chess Federation (VCF) in Moscow on December 1, 2021, for organising international chess tournaments in the next 10 years.
FIDE will include the annual HDBank International Chess Tournament held in Vietnam in its list of official tournaments and help improve its field.
The VCF will organise the tournament, improve the skills of Vietnamese team and players and get players from all over the world.
As part of the tournament, the parties also agreed to organise workshops for referees, coaches, and organisers and chess classes for teenagers and younger children by grandmasters.
They will undertake a programme called 'Chess in schools' and organise events in 2022, a year that has been designated by FIDE as The Year of Women in Chess.
Cooperation between the three parties is of great significance in improving the skills of Vietnamese players, referees and organisers to help chess in the country grow stronger and become more professional.
Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao, permanent vice chairwoman of HDBank, said: "Chess, with its special language of intelligence, has been a bridge to help people get closer together and blur borders between countries, religions, languages, and cultures.
"That is why HDBank has chosen to embrace it for nearly a decade as part of our sustainable development programme."
With the signing of the memorandum of understanding, HDBank will continue to foster chess and collaborate with the VCF as it has done for more than a decade since 2011.
The HDBank International Chess Tournament is held in March every year since 2011 and has become a unique sporting event. The tournament has twice welcomed the FIDE President: Kirsan Ilyumzhinov in 2018 and Arkady Dvorkovich in 2019.
In 2020 and 2021 the tournament was not held due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Over its nine years the HDBank International Chess Tournament attracted players from 42 countries and five continents.
Their numbers kept increasing every year as did the field and organisation.
With an average elo rating of 2370 - 2400, experts consider the HDBank International Chess Tournament the most elite in Asia.
#HDBank
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International Chess Federation ties up with HDBank for 10 years - Taiwan News
City girl ranked World No. 2 in Under-10 chess rankings – The Hindu
Child prodigy Alana Meenakshi Kolagatla (10) has made the city proud by being ranked as the World No. 2 in the Under-10 girls chess ranking that was recently declared by the Fdration Internationale des checs (FIDE), also known as the International Chess Federation.
Addressing a press conference here on Thursday along with her parents Madhu and Aparna Kolagatla, Meenakshi said she has been playing on the international circuit for the past three years.
Having achieved the Women Candidate Master (WCM) title, Meenakshi said that her recent performances in Europe across all formats and in the Serbian Womens League Chess Championship-2021 helped her achieve the high ranking.
Dr. Aparna added that Meenakshi was now qualified to play against higher ranked players and she is just two titles away from becoming an International Master (IM).
My immediate goal is to secure FIDE Master (FM), which is not far off, said Meenakshi.
Having started playing chess from the age of seven, Meenakshi had earlier won the Asian Schools U-7 Girls 2018, Classic Gold, Asian Youth U-8 Girls 2019, Rapid Gold, Western Asian U-8 Girls 2019, Rapid Gold and Western Asian U-8 Girls 2019, Blitz Gold.
She is being coached by Chiranjeevi.
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City girl ranked World No. 2 in Under-10 chess rankings - The Hindu
Giving Tuesday | US Chess.org – uschess.org
Dear US Chess Friends,
#GivingTuesdayis a global day of generosity taking place today. It was created in 2012 as a simple idea: a day that encourages people to do good. Over the past 9 years this idea has grown into a year-round global movement that inspires hundreds of millions of people to give, collaborate, and celebrate generosity.
US Chess is proud to be a part of this global celebration of giving that empowers people and organizations to transform their communities and the world. #GivingTuesday is an opportunity for members of the chess community to stand united and make a positive change in the lives of others.
With 97,000 members until the pandemic hit, US Chess facilitates connection among clubs, scholastic programs, and individuals across the nation.An estimated 70 million chess enthusiasts in the United States have yet to join or even hear of US Chess.
We want to reach out, extend an invitation, and ensure that chess is fully recognized nationwide for its benefits as an invaluable tool for education, recreation, and rehabilitation.
As you know, few organizations can match the diversity of our community and the gratifying sense of inclusion that comes with it. Everyone is welcome in the US Chess Federation, and we believe the culture of inclusion is our unique strength and advantage.
And this is why we're reaching out to the US Chess community this #GivingTuesday. Please consider how youd like to participate in#GivingTuesdayby advancing our collective mission to:
Empower people, enrich lives, and enhance communities through chess.
For more information about #GivingTuesday, pleasevisit our webpage at uschess.org at the Give tab. Youcan also make a tax-deductible donation by clicking here.
It is our sincerest wish that you and your family stay healthy and safe during this Holiday Season. Happy Holidays and thank you for supporting US Chess!
Warm Regards,
Carol MeyerUS Chess Executive Director