CHESS PUPPIES
Karen Hernandez, the 2002 All-Filipino Chess tournament's junior best scorer and the lone female contestant in the 2004 Non-master chess tourney opening this Sunday, cuddles 5 puppies with dad, tournament chairman and champion of the 2003 Senior and Junior Open.
Checkmate!
(Photo by Roberto Hernandez
THE FIRST chess tournament of 2004 will fire off this Sunday, January 11, at Paul Brothers Tri-M General Merchandise and Food Retail in Malakal.
More than 20 senior players and about 10 junior players have already registered.
The single round-robin tourney is being sponsored by Jose Omega ($100.00 to the senior champion) and Nilo de Jesus, who is donating cash prizes to the top 3 finishers in the junior division.
De Jesus is also providing one long table for the tilt. Joji Casinas, the venue host, is donating the trophies to the top 5 finishers in both categories.
The game will start at 1 pm with the pairings based on the players' rating. The number one seed (Ivan II Chess Computer) will be playing against the player in the middle of the rating.
Newcomers will start with the rating of 1500.
The time control for adults is 90 minutes for each player to finish the game. 30 minutes each in the kids division if they will write their moves or best-of-3 series.
Registration fee is $10 for kids and $15 for adults. The extra $5.00 is for cash prizes of 2nd to 4th runners-up.
The Sonneborn Berger system of tiebreak will be used to break ties among the top placers.
The Median system will be used if another tie happens. The Solkoff system is the last tiebreaker to be used where the player who played the most black pieces more wins.
Chess notation is a wonderful invention -- a time machine that allows us to enjoy games of all eras, even those played hundreds of years ago.
Here we see one of the first great masters, Gioachino Greco, in action.
While Greco is credited with developing some gambits, his main contribution to chess was to publish witty collections of games that illustrates his theories.
Greco considered the following as one of his best games. It is against an unknown player in the year 1619(!) in Rome.
1. e4 b6 2. d4 Bb7 3. Bd3 Greco often preferred developing his bishop to d3 rather than c4 or b5. As the game progresses, you will see that this piece is perfectly placed. 3. ... f5 Black offers a pawn to break up the enemy center.
4. exf5 White accepts the pawn, and the fireworks begin! ... Bxg2 5. Qh5+ g6. It is interesting that hundreds of years after this game was played, all of the moves so far are still considered "by the book".
If you are not aware of the date, you might believe that this game is from the Hypermodern movement of the 20th century...
6. fxg6 Nf6 Black gets greedy and losses immediately. The typical continuation is 6. ... Bg7 7. gxd7+ Kf8 8. hxg8=Q+ Kxg8 9. Qg6 (or Qg4) Bxh1 and Black has a reasonable game.
7. gxh7 Nxh5 Gleefully seizing the enemy queen, but not seeing the danger. 8. Bg6 mate.
Even after four centuries, some games can still elicit a smile.
Source: Chessmate by Roberto Hernandez
Tia Belau Newspaper
Pages 9 & 12
Volume 13
January 09-16, 2004
No comments:
Post a Comment