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Chess club lets players polish skills
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By Laura McFarland
Rocky Mount Telegram
Thursday, July 17, 2008

Sarah Davenport was tired of her younger brother beating her at chess.

Actually, she was tired of everyone she played beating her. So when she heard about a chess club starting up at Church on the Rise in Rocky Mount, she decided to give it a try.

“I wanted to learn how to be able to play chess without getting my butt kicked all the time,” said Davenport of the Battleboro community.

The club, which started in May, offers free instruction and practice at 7 p.m. every Thursday at the church, said Evan Whittington, its founder. Though the club meets at the church, membership is open to the community.

“If you are the kind of person that enjoys a challenge and enjoys solving problems and just having fun with people, then (chess) is a game that would be good to learn,” said Whittington of Whitakers.

During the class, Whittington offers about 30 minutes of instruction and then lets the students play to put concepts into practice.

Last week, Whittington taught the students about pawn placement, which didn’t sound like a big deal to Davenport until it came time to play.

“I played Evan, and he pointed out … why pawn placement was important, because he took up a quarter of the board just with pawns, just with the way he had his pawns defending and attacking. I couldn’t get onto that side of the board whatsoever,” Davenport said.

Davenport has been attending the class with her younger brother, Traevonne Pride, and once with her godmother, Janette Dresser of the Battleboro community. Dresser liked the idea of an activity that allowed them to spend quality time together.

“If you go to the movies and stuff like that, you are not really interacting with each other. I like finding stuff to do with the kids where we are actually communicating and spending time together, not just sitting near each other staring at a screen,” Dresser said.

Dresser had little experience of chess before she attended one of the chess club meetings, but she was hooked right away. It was a game she always had wanted to learn, but brief lessons from her children proved unfruitful.

Here is the full article.

Source: Susan Polgar Blog

Source: Jim West On Chess http://jimwestonchess.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss
The July 2008 issue of Chess Life features a Philidor Counter Gambit in the Solitaire Chess column by Bruce Pandolfini.

Black could have improved on 19…Ne8 by 19…d5 20.Nd6+ Bxd6 21.Bxd6 Rff7 (21…Re8 22.Be5 Rf7? 23.Ne4! Pandolfini) 22.Be5 g4 23.h4 Ne8 24.g3 Rxf1+ 25.Rxf1 Qe7 with only a slight advantage for White.

Artwork by Mike Magnan

Chess has ’staggering effect’ on pupils’ education
4:30am Thursday 17th July 2008
By Dan Webber

Hanif Khan can’t get enough of chess.

The 11-year-old has only been playing the ancient game for a year – but has already taken the scalps of several teachers at his school, Park Pupil Referral Unit (PRU) in Bowling Park, Bradford.

To Hanif’s delight, the school introduced the game to pupils in March this year during activity sessions. The move has proved an unprecedented success with staff amazed at the impact the game has had on pupils’ academic results and confidence.

So much so that Park Primary PRU, which caters for children who have been excluded or are in danger of being excluded from a mainstream setting, hosted its own chess tournament yesterday which pitched pupils against peers from Lower Fields and Southmere primary schools.

About 35 youngsters played five games each, picking up points along the way for victories. And Hanif, to his school’s delight, finished on top.

He said: “I have playing for a while now – it’s fun because you can play with each other’s pieces. It feels great to win – I didn’t lose a game. I can even beat some of my teachers. Chess really helps you focus.”

Pupils took part in the tournament, believed to be the first in the country held in a pupil referral unit, after receiving some last-minute tips from chess supremo Gerry Walsh, president of the English Chess Federation, the game’s ruling body.

Mr Walsh, a chess arbiter or referee and a friend of grandmaster and former chess World Champion Garry Kasporov, said he had been particularly impressed by the Bradford pupils’ performance.

He said: “Chess is out there just waiting to be discovered.

“The kids here have got good thinking heads – you can see them thinking carefully about each move and considered the impact it will have.

“Chess is competitive, it helps team-building, it makes you think and it improves concentration skills – it is perfect preparation to help them in their exams.

“And the good thing is I can see the talent is there just waiting to be discovered.”

Anne Carter, a special educational needs co-ordinator at Park Primary PRU said she had been “staggered” by the impact chess had had on her pupils’ all-round education.

She said: “Playing chess has helped improve pupils’ confidence, self-esteem and concentration. It’s absolutely staggering when you consider the children we have got at the school.

“I am amazed at the difference it has made to the children and am amazed at the way they have performed at the tournament today.”

Mrs Carter contacted the English Chess Federation (ECF) in the spring after hearing about the body’s plan to give ten chess sets to every school in England.

Here is the full article.

Source: Susan Polgar Blog

Source: Streatham & Brixton Chess Club http://streathambrixtonchess.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
“Nobody remembers their names today,” wrote Czesław Miłosz about the pre-World War One Polish poets, “And yet their hands were real once,/ And their cufflinks gleamed above a table.”

In chess, it’s different. Whatever her short-term cruelties, for the most part Caissa turns out to be a kinder Goddess over the longer term than the Muses: many ancient games played even between patzers are preserved, played-through, remembered, loved, at least for a moment, something that cannot be said for the work of the failed and forgotten poets of yesteryear.

Take the game below. Badly played, chockablock with missed opportunities - but exciting and intriguing and vivid almost 125 years after the fact. Here the white pieces are handled by PJ Lucas of Sussex the black by South Norwood’s JE Rabbeth, representing Surrey on the day:

And why am I telling you this?

It’s my roundabout way of reminding you that Surrey County Chess Association is 125 years old, is celebrating the event this Sunday, and that you’re invited to join in the fun.

(In fact the day will see a double-celebration. The Surrey Under 175 side, following their 2nd place in the SCCU section, progressed to the ECF County U175 Final to play Essex earlier the month, where they managed to grind out an excruciatingly-tight 8½ to 7½ victory.)

Anyway at least four Streatham & Brixton Chess Club players, including myself, will be attending on Sunday and if you’d like to join us and everybody else then you should email Mike Gunn now for full details and for an entry form.

Who knows? Maybe in 125 years, the gleaming or otherwise moves you make on the day will somewhere be remembered still, by someone . . .

PS. Thanks also to Mike Gunn for the game, who in his email to me added two historical notes. Firstly, that it appears as if Surrey and Sussex were the only two county chess associations existing in southern England at the time the match was played. Secondly, that “Rabbeth was playing one board lower than Leonard P Rees who after setting up the SCCA in 1883, went on to set up the SCCU (1892), the BCF (1904) and possibly even FIDE (he was described as a “senior FIDE official” in a report describing FIDE’s attempts to get control of the arrangements of the World Championship matches in 1928).”

Since Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other hostages were freed two weeks ago from a FARC terrorist group in Colombia, details about their long captivity have gradually emerged. One of the more interesting stories was how one of the three American contractors who was rescued, Marc Gonsalves, used a broken machete to carve a chess set [...]
Source: http://gambit.blogs.nytimes.com/rss2.xml

“Should the Democratic Congress overturn the ban on domestic offshore oil drilling?”

After nearly 53,000 votes, 74% of voters said yes, 24% said no, and 2% said maybe.

Do you agree with this poll?

Source: AOL

Source: Susan Polgar Blog

Rituals, stunts help Texas Rangers pass chemistry test
09:33 PM CDT on Wednesday, July 16, 2008
By RICHARD DURRETT / The Dallas Morning News

ARLINGTON – Chemistry is a critical part of a competitive baseball club. Players spend nearly every day together for at least seven months. It’s a lot more enjoyable when teammates genuinely like and pull for each other.

That appears to be the case with the 2008 Rangers, who have played with enthusiasm and fun through the first half of the season.

Chess, anyone?

Cards, dominoes and even crossword puzzles are staples of most major league clubhouses. But since the middle of May, chess has taken over as the game of choice for a group of Rangers.

“It’s a strategic game that has to be good for the mental side of things, right?” Gerald Laird said. “It brings guys together that don’t normally hang out on the road. Younger guys are hanging out with veterans. That’s a good thing.”

Laird, German Duran, Ian Kinsler and Frank Francisco are the most frequent players. When Laird plays, the matches include trash talking and plenty of shouting. And he claims you have to keep an eye on Francisco.

“Frankie is good, but he thinks he’s better than he really is. And he takes forever to make a move, so he lulls you to sleep,” Laird said. “Frankie’s horse moves in different directions than it should.”

Source: www.dallasnews.com

Source: Susan Polgar Blog

Source: United States Chess Federation http://main.uschess.org/index2.php?option=com_rss&feed=RSS2.0&no_html=1
CLO writer Jonathan Hilton will be the guest on chess.fm this Thursday. Tune in to hear him talk about blogging, his How Wojo Won series and his editing work.