Author: Cejones

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Laurel Mountain Tournament This Weekend

The last scholastic tournament of the school year is this Saturday, April 11th at Laurel Mountain Elementary.  There will be NO onsite registration, and your last chance to register online is this Wednesday, April 8th by midnight.  This tournament has a 400 player cap and they are already at 390, so if you are planning to attend, you should click the registration link below.

Laurel Mountain Elementary chess tournament website

Tournament registration website

Good luck to all of our students this weekend!

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Scholar’s Mate

Scholars Mate

At today’s Chess Club meeting, we showed a video on how to anticipate and defend against the Scholar’s Mate.  The Scholar’s Mate is sometimes referred to as the “Four-Move Checkmate”, although there are other ways to checkmate in four moves.  We also introduced the students to the “Squares of Doom”, which are the weakest squares on the chess board, F2 and F7, because they are only defended by the King.  The Scholar’s Mate uses this weakness of the square of doom to checkmate the King.

The Scholar’s Mate is known by different names in other countries:

  • In some languages, including French, Turkish, German, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese: Shepherd’s Mate
  • In Italian: Barber’s Mate
  • In Persian, Greek and Arabic: Napoleon’s Plan
  • In Russian: Children’s Mate
  • In Polish, Danish, German, Croatian, Hungarian, Slovenian, Slovakian and Hebrew: Shoemaker’s Mate
  • In Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish: School Mate
  • In Esperanto: Stultula Mato

Chesskid.com Opening Traps: Scholar’s Mate  Video Link that shows examples on how to defend if your opponent bring out their Bishop first.

A followup video is also recommended to watch where they show how to defend if your opponent bring out their Queen first.

 

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The Noble Game – A Short Film

This is a ~30 minute short film that documents scholastic chess in France.  It follows kids and parents as they compete in a tournament to earn a spot in the French championship tournament.   While it is in French, it has subtitles and worth watching to get a better understanding of the tournament experience.

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Spring Break Chesskid Contest Results

Over spring break, we held a contest to see who played the most games of chess and who completed the most puzzles on Chesskid.com.  Here are the results:

Spring Break 2015 Contest Winners

 

Congratulations to DisgustingDog for winning the most games played AND solving 86 puzzles correctly.  Everyone who participated will receive Chess Bucks at the next Club meeting.