Central Texas Chess club
We were surprised two weeks ago when we found a beautiful marble chess set that was donated to the Chess Club by Patrick Ivey. It has a very heavy and thick marble base board and elegantly carved pawns and pieces. We had a couple of kids test it out and they all gave their approval to a nice set with good weight. Thank you for your generous donation and please know it will go to good use.
We had 41 students participate at the Laurel Mountain Chess Tournament. Here are some photos of the Saturday event. Congratulations to all of those who won medals and trophies.
ing Break
The chess club participated in the Casis Elementary chess tournament held on January 30th, 2016. The tournament had over 400 participants and we had 48 students from Spicewood attend. (12% were from Spicewood!) Our students did great winning two 1st place and three 2nd place team trophies. Individual awards were given to 11 students who won trophies and 16 students who won medals for their performances. We had quite a few new students do well who have only been playing chess since September. The students worked really hard the last few months and it paid off. Great job Spicewood students!
Congratulations to the students who won trophies: Darryl Tang, Bryan Lee, Jacob Li, David Liu, Jameson Murphy-Hall, Sambit Kanjilal, Annika Shivam, Shalin Lakhia, Marvel Chung, Aakash Nagarahalli and Ivan Leong.
Congratulations to the students who won medals: Marcus Fung, Varun Sanghavi, William Du, Reett Aulakh, Jack Megnin, Aria Mitra, Milo Garcia, David Li, Kavin Thiyagarajan, Alina Du, Brandee Benson, Ethan Fung, Raghav Aggarwal, Dhruv Pathak, Ethan Tang and Tianwen Gao.
We had a very successful and fun pizza party and chess training session last Saturday, January 23rd at Spicewood Elementary. Over 80 parents and kids attended, learning more chess techniques to use and traps to watch out for at the upcoming Casis Elementary Chess tournament.
Gary Gaiffe and Josh Newsham, local chess experts and private chess tutors graciously attended and performed a couple of simultaneous matches against some of our students. A big thank you to both of these guys for attending.
Thank you to Laura Reebe for coming in on a Saturday to allow us to use the library and cafeteria for this event. Also thank you to the parents who donated drinks, snacks and supplies.
Here are some photos of the event. If you have any other photos you would like to share, please email them to Chris Jones (chris@spicewoodchess.org)
In order to prepare for the upcoming Casis Elementary Chess tournament on January 30th, the Chess Club is holding a Saturday practice session on January 23rd to help everyone hone their chess skills.
All Chess club members are invited to this event, even students who are not planning to attend the Casis tournament.
This event starts at 10AM in the Library where we will practice our chess skills as well as watch some helpful videos for the tournament.
Around noon, the club will provide pizza for lunch. We need parents to volunteer to bring napkins, paper plates and juice boxes. We are expecting to have around 40-70 students attending.
Parents can drop off kids for this event, but we ask that you come in and let one of the club coaches know and give us your contact information. It is preferred that the parents stay to help us manage the kids.
An Evite was sent out to all parents. If you did not receive that invitation, please let Chris Jones know via email (chris@spicewoodchess.org).
At today’s meeting we held our first of two Chess stores. Our students earn Chess bucks for attending our weekly meetings as well as for participating in Chess tournaments. The students can then spend these Chess bucks on fun items like toys, games, books and puzzles during the Chess store event. The Chess store is a great motivational event for our club members. Thank you to all of our volunteer parents for helping make this first Chess store a big success.
A knight’s tour is a sequence of moves of a knight on a chessboard such that the knight visits every square only once.
It is an interesting chess puzzle that starts by removing all chess pieces from a chess board and leaving just one knight on any of the 64 squares. The puzzle involves trying to make the knight jump around the board and eventually land on all 64 squares without landing on a square already visited.
The knight’s tour problem is the mathematical problem of finding a knight’s tour. Creating a program to find a knight’s tour is a common problem given to computer science students.
The earliest known reference to the knight’s tour problem dates back to the 9th century AD. In Rudraṭa’s Kavyalankara, a Sanskrit work on Poetics, the pattern of a knight’s tour on a half-board has been presented as an elaborate poetic figure (“citra-alaṅkāra”) called the “turagapadabandha” or ‘arrangement in the steps of a horse.’
Below is a very good video describing the knight’s tour problem from a mathematics perspective.
At last Friday’s club meeting, the Pawns reviewed two training videos. The first one on the Ruy Lopez opening, also known as the Spanish opening.
Chesskid video: What is the Ruy Lopez?
The second video that the Pawns reviewed was about a great tactic known as the fork which is where a single piece makes two or more direct attacks simultaneously.
Chesskid video: Tactics: The Fork!
The Knights reviewed a Chesskid video on outposts which is a square on the fifth, sixth, or seventh rank which is protected by a pawn and which cannot be attacked by an opponent’s pawn. Outposts are a favorable position from which to launch an attack, particularly using a knight.
Chesskid video: Outposts
The club also purchased and donated a booster amplifier for use in the library to make the overhead speaker system easier to hear. We tested the amplifier after the meeting and the overhead speakers can get very loud, making it easy for the coaches to drown out the kids when they get overly rambunctious. Ms. Reeb was very appreciative for the donation and help setting up the new amp.
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