Category: Event

Posted on

Club Meeting – September 7th

In today’s meeting, James showed the following video to the Pawns group:

Chris reviewed the Ruy Lopez opening and showed the following video to the Knights group:  

Ruy Lopez is the short name of Rodrigo Lopez de Segura who was a Spanish priest who lived between 1530 and 1580.  Ruy Lopez wrote a book in 1561 called Libro de la invención liberal y arte del juego del Axedrez which was one of the first definitive books about modern chess in Europe. 

The Ruy Lopez Opening (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5) is named after him, as is a variation in the Petroff Defence (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nxe5 Qe7).

The painting above shows Ruy Lopez being defeated by Leonard di Cutri, an Italian chess master.  After Leonard won against Ruy Lopez in Spain, he asked for his town Cutro to be exonerated of taxes and called Cutro “City of Chess”, where every year this event is remembered in a traditional day in August.

We also handed out some bonus chess homework that reviews how to take Chess notation during a chess game.  We ask that each student play a game of chess this weekend and write down the game in Chess notation on the provided notation sheet.  Students that turn in the notation sheet with a game written down will get a Chess buck at next week’s meeting.  If you did not receive the handout at today’s meeting, you can download and print it at home using this link.

Posted on

Club Registration is Open

Registration for the 2018-2019 school year opened on August 15th.  Please click on the About section above and then click on the Registration link.  That page gives all the details on the registration process and a link to the Registration Form. You can also click here to go directly to that page.

Club registration will end on September 14th.  After this date, we will no longer accept any new students until the second semester begins in January 2019.  

For parents and students that are thinking about joining our club, you can attend our first three club meetings without committing to join.  Come to our meetings and see how you like it.  We ask that you make your final decision to join by our registration deadline of September 14th. 

Posted on

Spicewood Chess Club at Enchanted Rock

Sean wearing his club tshirt at the top of Enchanted Rock!

Let’s make this a recurring post.  Send us photos of yourself wearing your Chess club tshirt from interesting places and we will post them here for everyone to see.  

Great idea Sean and family!  

Posted on

First Chess Club Meeting for Returning Students

All returning Chess club students are invited to our first Chess club meeting on the SECOND day of school, Friday August 17th starting at 6:35am in the Library.

All parents are asked to follow the steps to register your student(s) by going to our Registration page located here:

Registration

The registration fee is the same as last year.  Please make sure you follow the directions for making your payment.  This we, we ask that if you plan to turn in a check at this Friday’s meeting, please postdate it for August 24th.  The reason for this is that Ms. Reeb will not be at the club meeting on the 17th but will be at the following meeting.  

For all NEW students who want to join the Chess club, your first meeting will be August 24th. Same time and location as above. 

Thank you and we are all looking forward to a fun year of Chess and Chess related activities. 

Chris and James

Posted on

Casis Elementary Tournament Results

Last weekend, 31 Spicewood chess club members attended the Casis Elementary School chess tournament.   The tournament consisted of 5 rounds of games each worth 1 point.  In total, our kids scored a total of 81 out of a possible 155 points. (52%) Overall, our team won team trophies in 4 sections:  2nd place in sections K-3 U500 and K-3 U800.  3rd place in sections K-5 U800 and K-5 Any.

Five Spicewood students received trophies for scoring in the top percentile of their groups:  Gavin Wang (5th place in K-3 U300), Vincent Yang (4th place in K-3 U500), Ramzi Matous (1st place in K-5 U300), Marvel Chung (2nd place in K-5 U800) and Kavin Thiyagarajan (4th place in K-5 U800).

Ten Spicewood students received medals for scoring in the second percentile of their groups: Joyce Song, Draden Jones, Bryan Lee, Varun Sanghavi, Isaac Zhang, Yifan Qiu, Alexander Ho, Raghav Aggarwal, Ivan Leong and Aryan Punalekar.

Congratulations to all of the participants.  Each will receive special commemorative $5 Chess bucks for participation shown in the photos below.  On one side, it shows a photo of Lilia May Casis who the school was named after.  She was the first female professor at the University of Texas at Austin to be honored with a full professor title in 1916 teaching romance languages.  On the other side of the Chess buck is an image of Lilia’s sister, Josephine Ramona Casis who was a lifelong primary school teacher for 33 years at the original Palm School. The two sisters were born in Kingston, Jamaica around 1870 and moved to Texas in 1890.

If you have photos from the tournament, please send them to Chris Jones at chris@spicewoodchess.org

[Show thumbnails]

 

Posted on

T-Shirt Day!

At today’s Club meeting, we handed out the new Chess club T-shirts to all attending students. Don’t worry if you missed the meeting today, we will get your shirt to you.  If you are a parent that ordered one and were not at today’s meeting, please come next week and make sure you pay for the extra shirt. ($7)  James recognized Abigail Yarbrough in front of the whole club, thanking her for her winning design.  Everyone loves it.  (See her photo in the slideshow below).  It was probably one of a few opportunities we would have to take a group photo with everyone wearing the shirt, so enjoy the photos below.  It really is like herding cats trying to get everyone to stay still long enough and actually smile at the same time!  Thanks to all the parents that attended today for your help and a special thanks goes out to Christina Mason for leading the procurement and pickup of the Tshirts.

[Show thumbnails]

Posted on

Chess Club T-shirts!!!

2016-2017-tshirtWe will be ordering t-shirts at the end of next week.  The shirt will look like the mockup image to the left.  This year’s t-shirt graphic was designed Abigail Yarbrough who won our design contest earlier in the year. The t-shirt material will also be a higher quality than last year’s, softer, etc.

All Chess club members will receive a t-shirt as part of their registration fee.  If parents would also like one of these shirts, you will need to fill out the following form with your information and pay $6 for each extra shirt you buy.

Parent T-shirt Order Form

Posted on

Kealing Tournament Results

kealing-signLast weekend, 39 Spicewood chess club members attended the Kealing Middle School chess tournament.   The tournament consisted of 5 rounds of games each worth 1 point.  In total, our kids scored a total of 91.5 out of a possible 189 points. (48%)

Overall, our team won a team trophy in all 6 sections we participated in!  1st place in sections K-3 U300 and K-5 U500.  2nd place in sections K-3 U500, K-5 U800 and K-5 Any.  3rd place in section K-3 U800.   Really a great job by everyone.

Six Spicewood students received trophies for scoring in the top percentile of their groups:  Murtaza Sanjeliwala (4th place in K-3 U300), Yifan Qiu (1st place in K-5 U500), Alexander Ho (2nd place in K-5 U500), Noah Greep (3rd place in K-5 U500), Kavin Thiyagarajan (4th place in K-5 U500) and Annika Shivam (6th place in K-5 U800).

Nine Spicewood students received medals for scoring in the second percentile of their groups: Isaac Zhang, Alice Zhang, Sean Toeh, Rounav Sur, Benjamin Sloma, Niko McMullen, Ivan Leong, David Li and Aryan Punalekar.

Congratulations to all of the participants.  Each will receive special commemorative $5 Chess bucks for participation shown in the photos below.  On one side, it shows a photo of Hightower Theodore Kealing who was an African-American educator, writer, editor and activist in Austin in the 19th century.  Kealing Middle school is named after him.  One the other side of the Chess buck is an image of Kealing Middle school’s mascot, the hornets.

[Show thumbnails]