Author: Cejones

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Last Club Meeting of the Year

Today was our last club meeting of the school year.  We celebrated by bringing out the LED Chess sets and the 4 way Chess sets for kids to play.  Ms. Kim also stopped by and spoke to the group to tell them they did a great job this year and to encourage them to keep playing Chess over the summer.  We also let the graduating 5th graders say a few words of encouragement to the rest of the club and we wished them well as they move on to Canyon Vista Middle School.  We are sure to see them at Chess tournaments next year.

Here are a few photos from today’s meeting. (Thanks to Marlon Revelett for the photos)

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Next week, there will be no Chess club meeting, but we are asking parents that are available to meet in the Library at 6:40AM-7:40AM to help organize, clean and store all of the Chess Club equipment.  We plan to disinfect all chessmen and boards before storing them over the summer and request your help next week.  Parents that attend next week’s organization meeting can bring their kids if they want to also help.

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May 2015 Chess Store

We held the last Chess Store of the school year today.  Thank you to all the volunteers who manned the store and helped make it a successful and fun event.  Here are a few photos from the event:

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Remember, if you have any leftover Chess Bucks from this year, you can always use them next year at the next Chess Store event.

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Chess Club Yearbook Page

The 2014-2015 school yearbooks were delivered this week and our club has a nice one page layout with many photos of our club members.  Thanks to all the people who worked on the yearbook and made it so nice.  Here is a scan of the page, can you find yourself in the photos?

Chess Club Yearbook Page

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Chess Library Books Due

If you borrowed a chess book this year, please return it this Friday.  All chess club property needs to be returned.
Below are photos of the covers for each of the chess books we loan out to students. If you have any of these books at home that were borrowed from the Chess Club, please return them to Ms. Reeb in the library.
Chess Library Covers
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En Passant

en_passantEn passant is a special pawn capture move that can only occur immediately after a pawn moves two ranks forward from its starting position, and an enemy pawn could have captured it had the pawn moved only one square forward. The opponent captures the just-moved pawn “as it passes” through the first square. The resulting position is the same as if the pawn had moved only one square forward and the enemy pawn had captured it normally. The en passant capture must be made at the very next turn, or the right to do so is lost.  It is the only occasion in chess in which a piece is captured but is not replaced on its square by the capturing piece.

The en passant capture rule was added in the 15th century when the rule that gave pawns an initial double-step move was introduced. It prevents a pawn from using the two-square advance to pass an adjacent enemy pawn without the risk of being captured.  Allowing the en passant capture, together with the introduction of the two-square first move for pawns, was one of the last major rule changes in European chess, and occurred between 1200 and 1600.

In today’s chess club meeting, we showed a Chesskid.com video that explains the en passant rule.  You can view that video here:

Chesskid.com en passant video

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Knight Shadow

At Friday’s club meeting, we showed a video on achieving checkmate with only a King and Queen.  The Queen is used to drive the opponent’s King into a corner by using the Knight’s shadow technique. Care must be taken to leave some room for the opponent’s King to move, to avoid a stalemate position. The King then drives up the board to support the queen in the final checkmate move.

There is also a good article on Wikipedia that describes checkmate with only a King and Queen.

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Fried Liver Attack

fried_liver_200x200At this morning’s chess club meeting, we showed a Chesskid.com video on the Fried Liver Attack opening.

Chesskid.com Video

The Fried Liver Attack, also called the Fegatello Attack (named after an Italian idiom meaning “dead as a piece of liver”), is a chess opening. This colorfully named opening is a variation of the Two Knights Defense in which White sacrifices a knight for an attack on Black’s king.

The Fried Liver has been known for many centuries, the earliest known example being a game played by Giulio Cesare Polerio in about 1610.