Category: General

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Meridian Tournament Results

Screen Shot 2015-08-27 at 9.43.03 PMWe had 25 students from Spicewood Elementary participate in the Meridian Tournament last weekend.  The tournament consisted of 5 rounds of games each worth 1 point.  In total, our kids scored a total of 63.5 out of a possible 125 points.   Five Spicewood students received trophies for scoring in the top percentile of their groups:  Rounav Sur, Annika Shivam, Ivan Leong, Aryan Punalekar and Ethan Tang. Seven Spicewood students received medals for scoring in the second percentile of their groups: Aria Mitra, Yifan Qui, Jhivan James Ravichandran, Marvel Chung, Aakash Nagarahalli, Raghav Aggarwal and Tianwen Gao.  Congratulations to all of our participants.  Each received 5 Chess bucks.

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Club Meeting September 4th 2015

At this week’s meeting, the new club members will arrive.  We ask all returning club members to make sure and help the new kids feel welcome and help them learn how our club sets up each Friday.  We will watch the ten golden moves video and then make a few announcements to the kids and parents.

Announcements:

  1. Upcoming Tournament information
  2. Chess club folder information
  3. Chess store and chess bucks information
  4. Expected behavior during club meetings

Last year, we noticed many of our chess club folders were getting lost or damaged over time.  We decided this year to purchase plastic folders that are more durable and have a built in pocket for the kids to store their earned Chess Bucks.  We chose the Mead StayPut folder shown below:

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Phases of a Chess Game

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At tomorrow’s Chess club meeting, we have only returning students attending.  New students will start the following week.  Here is a short 7 minute video we plan to watch during tomorrow’s meeting on the three phases of a Chess game.  The Opening, the Middlegame and the Endgame.

Phases of the Chess game Chesskid video

You will need to log in using your Chesskid account to watch this full 7 minute video.  If you don’t remember your Chesskid account information, or don’t have one, please contact Chris Jones during the meeting or email him at chris@spicewoodchess.org

 

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New Skill Groups This Year

In the past we had seven different chess skill groups that we used to split up our players.   Panthers, Groups A, B, C, D, E and T.  This year, we decided to simplify into four skill groups:

New Group NameLast Year's NameDescription
Pawn


Panther Pawns


Panthers and Group E


Beginner Players typically grades K-2 with little or no Chess experience
Knight


Knights


Groups C and D


Intermediate players with some tournament experience typically grades 1-3
Rook


Rooks


Groups A and B


Advanced players with tournament experience typically grades 2-4
King


Spicewood Kings


Group T


Expert players with tournament experience typically grades 3-5.

 

The coaches and club leadership will have the ability to move players into the appropriate skill group based on their observation of the students chess play.

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Welcome to Spicewood Meeting

Today the PTA and Spicewood staff held a Get to Know Spicewood Elementary meeting for new 1st – 5th grade parents and students from 8-9 AM in the library.  The students were given a tour of the school while the parents met with the school staff and listened to details about what to expect the first few weeks of school.

The Chess Club setup a table with information about the club and provided the parents with a flyer that describes the club details and a new bookmark for the students to take home.  The bookmark has our website address displayed and on the back has the Fall Chess local scholastic tournament schedule.

We met many new parents that showed interest in joining the Chess club.

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2014-2015 End of School Year Review

Our Chess Club had a fantastic year and to end on a high note, we decided to put together a review of our accomplishments.  Please look through the file below that outlines all the great things our kids and volunteers have done over the past school year.

We look forward to next year with great enthusiasm and want to thank all of our volunteers, without which, none of this would be possible.
You can also view this file in PDF or PowerPoint format.
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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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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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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.