Hamilton Chess Club

Remember that it is members only while the club champs are on. If you are a guest interested in coming along check out the calendar at top left.

Open

Junior

Jenny joins brothers Jarvis and Jeff as the club’s newest member. Jenny continues this years trend of increasing female membership, and brings total membership to 42. Welcome Jenny. (Edit: Club’s Newest Member, not Clubs Newest Member!!)

Remember that it is members only while the club champs are on. If you are a guest interested in coming along check out the calendar at top left.

The club welcomes Finn Birnie-Selwyn and Perry Taylor as its newest members. Membership now stands at 41 with around half being Junior members

Open

Junior

Club ratings have now been updated incorporating all games played so far this year. Hugo has managed to get to the top of the table despite having played only 13 games. Richard and Hilton follow as second and third. In terms of highest club rating achieved over all time Richard and Hugo are currently tied on 1674 each. Eddie and Graham have achieved personal best club ratings this year of 1651 and 1641 resepctively. Current club ratings will be used to seed the draw for this coming weeks Club Championship.

The crosstables for the informal blitz tournaments held on the first two club nights of the year are below. Twenty players turned out on both nights. Eddie top scored in the first, while Eddie Richard and Stefan shared first place in the second. The games have now been incorporated into the club ratings, along with the just completed Autumn Blitz.

Informal 5 + 3 blitz February 3rd

Informal 5 + 3 blitz February 10th

The final results for the Autumn cup have been posted here. Hugo came first with a perfect 8. Richard was second dropping only the one game to Hugo. Congratulations to Sivoram , Christopher and Matt who tied for third place on 5 points. Club ratings will be updated shortly.

The club goes from strength to strength with four new members signing up in a single night. Diny Zhou and Joy Guo have joined as junior members. Good to see a few more girls being attracted to the club. Francis Seong has also joined the club as a Junior. Hugo Berthier has also joined and will certainly give our strongest players a challenge in the forthcoming club champs. Hugo is currently in New Zealand from his native France as is a very strong player with a fide rating of 2199 (2204 rapid, 2193 blitz). Membership now stands at forty!

Of 44 players that turned out for this weeks BOP rapid 11 play at the Hamilton club.

In the A division Hugo came first equal. Eddie did well with 3 points, Stefan scored 2.5 and Hilton 2.

In the B division Richard Dare was clear first on 6 points. Daniel managed 3.5 points, Gary scored 3, Craig 2.5, and Matt and Murray each got 2.

Congratulations to Joel who got 3.5 points in the Junior division and picked up a Junior Grade prize.

Crosstables are on the New Zealand Chess website

Final night of the Autumn cup this week, then the Club champs will run over six club nights starting Tuesday 10th March, with a 2 week break during the school holidays.

The format will be start time 7.15pm (7.30 on week 1 so I can get the draw done), 1 game per night, open to financial members (or financial members temporarily in arrears) only. You can check when your sub is due by going to the website – About > Who We Are. Online payments preferred, see the website for details. If you are not currently a member but want to take part then you can join on the first night (Adult: $40 per year, or $25 for 6 months. Juniors $20 per year)

There will be an Adult Division, and a Junior Division (stronger Junior members can elect to play in the Open Division if they wish; sadly – for some of us at least –senior members cannot elect to play in the Junior division).

Time control for adults will be 45 + 10. Time control for juniors will be 25 + 10

The winner of the Adult Division will be awarded the title Club Champion 2015 and receive all the accolades that are associated with the title. The winner of the Junior division will be awarded the title Club Junior Champion 2015 and will receive a book prize.

Entries will be seeded based on Current club ratings. (Club ratings will be updated when I have the crosstables for the blitz evenings held at the start of the year). No late entries allowed – so if you cant make it on the first night let me know and you will be awarded a bye. Also if you want to play but might be a little late on the first night let me know and I will include you in the draw. Please don’t turn up after 7:15 and expect me to redo the draw. Entries will not be accepted in week two or beyond.

Games start at 7.15pm – a 30 minute late time applies (your game is lost if you are 30 minutes late). Late time for Juniors is 25 minutes. Clocks will be started at 7:15 even if neither player is present.

Usual FIDE laws apply with  the exception of the Hamilton Chess Club Special Rules found here. Disputes committee will be club executive (Hilton Ian and Richard). If one or two of the disputes committee is/are party to a dispute, the remaining member(s) will constitute the disputes committee.

Please bring a pen to record your games (recording is mandatory in the open divison, but optional for the junior division).
One 1/2 point bye allowed per player, if notified to Ian the Sunday before the round that it applies.

No half point byes allowed in rounds 5 or 6.

Ties will be decided using tie breaks in the following order: Buchholz Cut 1, Buchholz Total, Buchholz Median, Sonneborn-Berger. If still tied the award will be shared.

If members want to use BOP rapid games between themselves for club ratings please agree between themselves to do so before the game and let me know the result. Club ratings will be updated shortly including all games played so far this year.

Hugo leads on 6 points, followed by Richard on 5, followed by four players on four points. Two games next week to complete the tournament. The crosstable so far is located here. Games kick off 730pm so dont be late.

The club welcomes Jasmine Podmore and Abdi Ali as its newest financial members.

The Autumn Cup kicked off last night with a staggering 28 participants, by far the best turn out for a club night yet, and boding well for the health of the club in 2015. After the first three rounds Hugo, Hilton, and Richard are in the lead with 3 points each. We will have three more rounds next week at time control 15+0, and then there will be two rounds of 25+0 on the final night. After that it will be straight in to the club champs. The crosstable for the Autumn cup so far is located here and the draw for round four assuming everyone turns up is located here. Please if you know you are not going to be there on the night let me know beforehand. Next week clocks will be starting at 7:30 sharp, so dont be late.

The tenth BOP rapid is on 28/2/15. This is NZ’s first and longest running Fischer time control rapid. A copy of the entry form can be found here.

Interested in how the website fared in 2014? check out the post below–

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 13,000 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 5 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

We are back to our usual clubnight schedule this coming Tuesday 03 Feb, 7pm. A proposed calendar for the year has been posted here and member comments are invited. We will start proceedings with a couple of nights of informal blitz (guests welcome) before the Autumn Cup then gets underway, followed by the club Champs commencing in March. Note that this year we will be operating only during the Hamilton Boys High School term time. See you next week !

If you missed it here is a great post on CHESSBASE about the recent New Zealand open. Scroll down for a picture of Hilton carrying out a post mortem. Hilton Graham and Fuatai took part in one or other of  the various events (rapid, open, blitz). Congratulations to Graham for his very respectable 18th place in the blitz !! Results can be viewed on the New Zealand chess website