All posts by Ian Whittaker

Donna Officer, mother of  Woman’s FIDE Master Amy Officer who was Scottish Girl Player of 2006, has kindly donated two large boxes of chess magazines to the club’s library (some originating from John Glendinning).

The boxes contained issues of:

British Chess Magazine (covering the period January 1959 through to December 1994);

  

Chess (from  May 1965 through to April 1985);

  

and have helped fill in a number of gaps in the library’s collections.

Also in the boxes were publications from the Manila Olympiad 1992 including the Souvenir Programme, daily Bulletins and the Tournament Book (which includes a record of every game played!).

                         

Once catalogued any duplicate issues will be either donated to junior players or sold to support the club’s chess playing activities.

Many thanks again to Donna (and John)!

Dear Online Championship Players,

Paul Roberts is leading with 4 points, with three chasing players 1 points behind!

We are now proceeding to the final round (5) and pairings have been sent out –  please contact your opponent and arrange a convenient time/date to play.   Once you finish please let me (Andre) know the result.

Enjoy your games!

Andre Antunes, Tournament Director

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Dear Club Member

Please see the note below from Ian Whittaker on a great coaching offer:

HYBRID COACHING FOR CLUB PLAYERS

As we approach the relaxation of lockdown and the possibility of OTB chess, we are delighted that GM Keti Arakhamia-Grant has agreed to lead a coaching programme to get players ready for battle!

Keti will run a series of 2-hour interactive evening weekly sessions on Monday nights for 5 weeks – on the Lichess platform and using Zoom initially but with the potential for face-to-face sessions in the club if at all possible. She will present an interactive lecture introducing the study theme, followed by “homework” for the following week. The homework is to be sent back to Keti individually and she will give feedback in the week between the sessions.

All participants need to have an account on Lichess, which is free and easy to register with, and the combination of Zoom and Lichess works well. If everyone is agreeable, we will also record the sessions – which is a useful option especially if someone is not able to attend any of the sessions, however it will only be made available to the participants for the period of the course.

In order to support this initiative, we would charge £40 for the 5 sessions and we need to get a minimum of 10 players to sign up – please can you advise Ian Whittaker (curator@edinburghchessclub.co.uk) asap if you are interested and wish to join in.

Once we have enough people signed up we will launch the coaching sessions with Keti!

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This week’s Chess Events (7.45pm start):

Best wishes,
Neil

On Saturday evening the club played a return match against the Mechanics Institute of San Francisco played over 10 boards on chess.com (2 games on each board: 15 minutes for the game with 2 second move increments) .

The game was broadcast (and recorded) on Twitch with commentary by a great line up made of GM Nick de Firmian, FM Paul Whitehead, WCM Allyson Wong along with MI’s Chess Director Abel Talamantez and MI’s General Manager Dr Judit Sztaray.

We lost 14-6 in the end against a strong side, but managed some good performances.  The top two boards ended equal with FM Neil drawing both his games on top board against IM Josiah Stearman whilst Adam deserves special mention for winning one game against GM Patrick Wolff.   Berislav managed half a point versus IM Elliott Winslow.  Ian held US National Master Mike Walder to a draw in their first game but whilst fighting hard in their second game got into time trouble and lost defending an opposite bishops endgame.

Some games from the match, annotated by GM Nick de Firmian, are in MI’s recent newsletter.

Message from Abel and the Mechanics’ Chess Team:

Hi Neil,

We wanted to give thanks to you and your team for helping organize the club match. It is great to have this kind of positive interaction between our clubs and communities, and we look forward to continuing to engage and collaborate in the future.

Edinburgh’s Team:

Neil Berry (thebalernobull)
Adam Bremner (AllStarShark)
Berislav Marusic (Sunshine1978)
Henk Bulthuis (henkbu)
Ian Whittaker (scotsgeek)
AJ Rushing (anacampserote)
Calum McGillivray (Penguin89C)
Ross Blackford (Ragnar006)
Robert Kane (fiercebadger)
Ian Johnston (SplashLeChat)

Full results can be found here on Chess.com.