Spicewood Elementary Chess Club

September 10, 2015

Club Meeting September 11th, 2015

The Panther Pawns will review how to setup the board, how the pieces move and the rules of castling. They will watch this video:

ChessKids video: Castling!

The Knights will watch a video on the the Ruy Lopez opening, also known as the Spanish opening.

ChessKids video: Ruy Lopez Opening

HowCast video:

The Rooks and Kings will begin a 3 week series on the Italian game lines. (fried liver, two knight defense, evans gambit)

ChessKids video: Italian Opening

ChessKids video: Italian Opening 2

HowCast video:

September 4, 2015

Rooks and Kings: Fried Liver Attack

The Rooks and Kings groups will be reviewing the Fried Liver attack at this week’s meeting.

The Fried Liver Attack, also called the Fegatello Attack (named after an Italian idiom meaning “dead as a piece of liver”), is a classic 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 around 1610.

The Fried Liver Attack is a super aggressive opening that derives from the two knights defense in the Italian game. White looks to sacrifice his knight on f7 so that he can take initiative and start a great assault against the black king. Black has to be on his toes and has to play very careful or else he will find himself checkmated very fast.

September 4, 2015September 4, 2015

Club Rules Posted

We have posted the rules of our Chess Club for all parents and kids to review. With any large group of people, it is important that we understand what is expected during our club meetings so we can all have a good time while learning the game of Chess.

You can view the rules by clicking on “About” above and scrolling down to “Rules” or you can simply click here.

September 3, 2015September 4, 2015

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:

Upcoming Tournament information
Chess club folder information
Chess store and chess bucks information
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:

August 27, 2015

Phases of a Chess Game

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

August 27, 2015August 27, 2015

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 Name	Last Year's Name	Description
Panther Pawns	Panthers and Group E	Beginner Players typically grades K-2 with little or no Chess experience
Knights	Groups C and D	Intermediate players with some tournament experience typically grades 1-3
Rooks	Groups A and B	Advanced players with tournament experience typically grades 2-4
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.

August 27, 2015August 27, 2015

First Scholastic Chess Tournament

Austin’s first scholastic tournament of the 2015-16 school year is open for registration. Come join us at the Meridian School on September 19th! (limited to the first 350 entries)

This Saturday, August 29th is the last day to register to get the discounted entrance fee of $25.

Entry fee pricing is staggered and based on date of entry. Online registration preferred!

*Early entry (scholastic – $25, open $25) thru Saturday, 8/29/2015
*Regular entry (scholastic – $30, open $25) thru Saturday, 9/12/2015
*One week Away (scholastic – $40, open $25) begins Sunday, 9/13/2015 and ends at noon on Thursday 09/17/2015, at which time online entry closes.

Adults can also play in the Open section but you will need to have a USCF membership and pay the same entrance fee as shown above.

August 27, 2015

August Chesskids contest results

We held a Chesskid.com contest this last week to see who would play the most fast chess games, attempt the most puzzles and watch the most training videos. Here are the results:

Congratulations to all of the participates who each get Chess Bucks for playing. We will hold many more of these contests over the next school year.

August 12, 2015August 12, 2015

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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June 10, 2015June 10, 2015

Summer Chess Camp

Local chess expert Gary Gaiffe is leading a chess camp the first week of August (3rd – 8th) at the Best in Class Education center located in the Galleria Oaks Shopping Center at Anderson Mill and Highway 183. Gary runs many of the local scholastic chess tournaments and he visited one of our club meetings in January to perform a simultaneous match against ten of our players that our kids really enjoyed. If you are looking for a fun and educational camp for your kids, please see more information below about this chess camp.

Greetings Chess Players and Parents,

We are running a chess camp from August 3^rd to the 8^th at the Best In Education Learning Center in the Galleria Oaks shopping center on Research at Anderson Mill Rd. To register for this camp contact Ravinder or Aruna Andrew at 512-969-8365. There is limited space at this venue so don’t wait too long to sign up as we expect to have more campers than we can accommodate. Below is a flyer with additional information.

[gview file=”https://spicewoodchess.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/2015-Summer-Chess-Camp-Flyer.pdf”]