Annex Chess Club Come What May Swiss (May 13 - June17 [Except May 20]) - Blog

[Bob Armstrong]

Annex Chess Club Come What May Swiss - Blog

Rd. 1 – 19/5/13

Bob's Chess Blog # 1 [ Part I of 3 parts]
(See Knight Logo below)

Club

Annex Chess Club, Toronto, Ontario, Canada


Tournament # 4

Name: ACC Come What May Swiss (4th regular swiss tournament in 2019).

Dates: May 13 – June 17 (Closed Victoria Day Holiday, May 20)

Rounds: 5

Sections: 3: Crown; U 1800; U 1400.

Section Notes:

1. The summer format: Crown (1700 +); U 1700 - where there are usually fewer players; right to play up.
2. The Club Championship has only 2 sections (so lower two sections' players get to play some different opponents): Championship (1800+); Reserves (U 1800); 1700’s have option to play up and usually do.
3. For a short time in 2017, Swisses had 4 sections: Master (2200 +); U 2200; U 1800; U 1400. Players within 100 pts. had the option to play up, and most did. It was temporarily shelved because the top two sections each had too few players; it will be reconsidered if the membership grows, and gets stronger.

Registrations: 39 registrants (So far): Crown: 9; U 1800: 18; U 1400: 12 [Substantially below the 2019 average (So far) of 51]. ACC tournaments often accrue players as the tournament progresses.

Rating: All sections are CFC-rated.

Playing Up Option: Players within 100 pts. of the floor of the section above may choose to play up, and most do. No playing up fee.

Time Control: G/90 + 30 sec. (From move 1)

Joining Annex CC: Lots of room and so ACC WELCOMES all new members. You can join a tournament in progress….you will get ½ pt. byes for the missed rounds (Only two).

Note: The club moved from Bathurst Street to Bloor St. W at the end of 2018...see the website for new location details – not far from the old location, and close to the Walmer Street exit of the Spadina Subway Station.

Blog Note:

This Blog, here on my personal Facebook page, is directly re-posted a few other places - so references here refer to this Fb platform.

The Day of Rd. 1 (19/5/13)

The Wee Hours of Monday Morning

I awoke at 5:00 AM with the alarm (Went to bed at 12:00 AM). This is a bit less than my average morning/night sleep of 6 hrs. I've noted before that, surprisingly, during weekend tournaments, I often sleep quite a bit less than normal. I do usually supplement my night sleep with an afternoon 1-hr. Siesta.

Template Note:

The are sections of this blog that are a standard template which I repeat in each Blog.

The template must be here for any new readers of my Blog.

So I ask my regular readers to be tolerant. If you have read the template part previously, you can skip from “Start of Template” to “End of Template” (I will alert you immediately after the template if there are any revisions).

Charging into Monday Morning

I am in Montreal, Quebec – I regularly live off and on with my son and granddaughter during the year.

I packed and headed back for Toronto at 5:50 AM.

The Afternoon

I arrived in Toronto about 12:30 PM (There were a number of stops on the way). I unpacked and had lunch. I checked the land line telephone messages, and then dealt with some of the pile of mail.

START OF TEMPLATE

Victim of Routine

As usual, I then went to my home office ((I am retired + unemployed – life is fine except for my slave-driver company, Canadian Life Consulting Cooperative [Quite a mouthful, but simply put: CLCC], where I must volunteer my work time for free all day long, 24/7!); and fired up my old laptop.

My Daily Personal Project Tasks

1. Check for my e-mails and Fb messages.

2. Check new posts/comments on ChessTalk (CT);

3. Check my Twitter feed to see what had been happening in the world (I follow numerous mainstream media from countries around the world, such as CBC, Toronto Star, National Post, NBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, France 24, China Daily, Al Jezeera (English), Japan Times, Sputnik News, The Guardian, etc.). I post the most relevant...see below.

4. Fb Project # 1 (My Company's) - My little company (Not legally registered yet) is called, as said above, Canadian Life Consulting Cooperative (CLCC). So I update my company's Fb page, Canadian Life Consulting (CLC) - https://www.facebook.com/Canadian-Life-Consulting-16406543…/. I do this by checking my Twitter inbox for articles to re-post onto CLC. I then also check my Fb newsfeed and some of my Fb friends timelines for posts to "share".

1. Update one of the discussion groups formed under my company page, called Canadian Life Consulting Cooperative Supporters' Group (Or CLCC Supporters) - https://www.facebook.com/groups/2042495809374373/. I update it by sharing some more discussable of the posts now on the CLC page.

1. Fb Project # 2 (My Own): Update this Fb world events/politics discussion group that I have created here on my own personal Fb account, called PEERS (A Discussion Club of Equals) – https://www.facebook.com/bob.armstrong.9235. I do this by also sharing some of the CLC page posts. But I also share some of my sources' posts directly to this discussion club.

7. I share at least one chess post per day to my Fb chess discussion club, Chess Chat, formed under my personal Fb account - https://www.facebook.com/groups/340524269771672/.

8. When I find them, I share discussable religious posts to my World Religions discussion club Fb Group, Theist Community - https://www.facebook.com/groups/1052227598173591/.

Sometimes these also appear in PEERS.

1. I have another retiree project besides my 2 Facebook Projects.
   
   Chess is a passionate hobby of mine, as you know. But I have never really studied seriously.

But what I do do, is I enter all my games, and annotate them, to try to learn something - GrandMasters do recommend this often. In addition, I integrate the opening (the first 10 moves) into an opening/defence tree I have for the opening/defence played. The value of this is pretty uncertain, given my inability to remember lines - but I do develop general impressions of how the opening can go.

So on my own time, I go back and forth between the 2 Facebook projects and my chess hobby project.

My 35/25 System

As well, I go back and forth between my routine items above and my own personal life tasks to be done that day. But I have a somewhat unique system for doing this.

Recently I found that I was spending a lot more time on my three retiree projects than my normal life tasks - don't we all spend more time on what we enjoy!

But I was falling behind in "life" while keeping up in the "Fb/chess" projects. So I did have to deal with this issue.

So I came up with the "35/25 System". What this is: When I am at home, I bite the bullet and I spend 35 min. on my life tasks, which I think of as “working for myself”; I even set the alarm! Then I reward myself with 25 min. on my 3 retiree projects (Facebook [2] & Chess). I try very hard to religiously stop when I am to change phases.

This has actually worked out well....I am still abysmally behind in "Life", but not nearly as much as I used to be! LOL

END OF TEMPLATE

Today though, I just got started into my routine. At 1:30 PM my partner and I had errands to run.

First it was off to my partner's cooperative pottery studio, to retrieve her pieces that did not sell during the May 2-5 sale.......she did sell a fair amount.......not her best, but quite good. I had to wrap them all up in 5 large plastic containers to bring home – in the meantime, my partner headed out to the local COSTCO to shop for the coming week (We are heading out to our hobby farm in the Southern Georgian Bay region in a few days). She then returned and helped finish the packing.

When we got home, one of the neighbour teens kindly offered to help bring the containers into the living room (They are somewhat heavy, and likely at almost 74 y.o., I am not quite lifting as much as I used to).

[See Parts II & III below]

Bob A

[Bob Armstrong]

Annex Chess Club Come What May Swiss - Blog

Rd. 1 – 19/5/13

Bob's Chess Blog # 1 [ Part II of 3 parts; see Part I above]

Siesta

Given that I usually sleep short compared to many in the morning night, and that my partner and I are both over 70 y.o., we have found that the European/Latin American practice of a siesta time in mid-afternoon works really well (We usually set the alarm and do not sleep more than 1 hour). And so I crashed at 5:00 PM. I got up at 6:30 PM (Unfortunately, and uncharacteristically, I turned of the alarm, but lay there a bit. It meant I might be a bit late getting to ACC by 7:30 PM for the start of Rd. 1, so I quickly banged out an e-mail that I was still coming, but might be 15 min. Late.

Heading Out for Rd. 1

At about 6:55 PM I headed downtown by TTC . The club is really very quick to get to, door to door – 35 min. generally.

Pre-Round 1

I got into ACC about 7:30 PM (right on time). I chatted briefly with Dave Southam and Dragan Jevtic – If you can believe, we discussed the saying:

“The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know!!”

Good prep for playing in a chess tournament.

Round 1

After some announcements, the round was started shortly after 7:30 PM. I have turned the game into my traditional “chess game quiz” (See below).

After the game, I watched some of our section games (And some top section games) still in progress, to get the leader results, and when I had the leader results for the U 1800 Section (I like to get my section results before going home, for this blog), I headed home by TTC.

The Late Evening

I got home about 11:45 PM and did a few e-mails. Then I was then too tired to do this Blog # 1.......so I decided to leave it 'til tomorrow (I post it by the next day – if I can't make it by then, I usually bail on doing it, since it is by a few days later, somewhat stale news).

U 1800 Section Chess Report on Rd. 1 (Monday, May 13, 2019).

My U 1800 Section

I am rated 1569 (Won over 100 rating points in the last ACC tournament!). I am ranked # 10 out of 18 players (In the middle third). This put me on Board # 1 facing the top seed!

Rating Spread

1600’s – 5
1500’s – 7 (my rating is here)
1400’s – 3
1300’s - 2 (Playing up)
1200's – 1 (Playing up to allow even number of players)

Total - 18

U 1800 Standings After Rd. 1

There were 8 boards in the section (The actual number of boards may have playing fewer than the total no. of players, due to byes, withdrawals, suspensions, etc.).

All games were decisive, and so there is now an 8-way tie for first (Won the first game).

My Round 1 Game

Here is my game, with a few light annotations, to show some of what I was thinking as I played (No analysis engine yet). You will see the Questions to be answered:

Player W - Player B [B27]

13.05.2019
[Armstrong, Robert (Bob) J.]

Questions:

1. What is Player W's rating?
2. What is Player Bl's rating?
3. Which player am I?
4. Who might be the other ACC member I played?
   
   1.e4 g6 2.d4 Bg7 Having a technical problem - the questions should not be repeated here, but they are showing up here when I put them prior to 1. e4 - sorry..... Questions: 1. What is Player W's rating? 2. What is Player Bl's rating?3. Which player am I?4. Who might be the other ACC member I played? 3.Nf3 c5 Modern Defence 4.Be3 Qa5+ 5.Nc3 cxd4 6.Bxd4 Nf6 We have now transposed into a Sicilian Dragon type structure. 7.Qd2 a6 The plan here is to try to psychologically discourage 0–0–0 by threatening a fast attack with ......b5. 8.0–0–0 Bring it on! says White 8...b5 This proves problematic for Black - he is now far behind in development and has the problem of a potentially hanging g2B if the f6N tries to move. 9.e5 W plays aggressively 9...b4 Black is also aggressive - the game suddenly is suddenly complex and tactical. 10.exf6 bxc3 11.Bxc3 W goes up a P 11...Qxa2 material equality + a back rank mate threat ....BUT...........look at Bl's development (??) 12.Qe3 a totally crushing move - mate of lose a B 12...0–0 13.fxg7 W is up a B 13...Re8 14.Qh6 Now comes the threat of the K-side attack, with Bl having only developed one piece! 14...f6 15.h4 Qf7 16.h5 gxh5 forced [16...Qxg7 17.Bc4+ e6 18.hxg6 Qxh6+ 19.Rxh6 hxg6 20.Rxg6+ Kf7 21.Rxf6+ Ke7; 16...g5 17.Nxg5 fxg5 18.Bd3 Qxf2 19.Bxh7+ Kf7 20.Qg6#] 17.Rxh5 Qg6 [17...Qxg7 18.Rg5 Qxg5+ 19.Nxg5] 18.Qxg6 W resigned. The game could continue 18...hxg6 19.Rh8+ Kxg7 20.Rxe8
   
   1-0
   
   Questions:
   
   1. What is Player W's rating?
   
   2. What is Player Bl's rating?
   
   3. Which player am I?
   
   4. Who might be the other ACC member I played?
   
   Answers:
   
   W - Vinorth Vigneswaramoorthy (1699)
   
   Bl - Bob Armstrong (1569)

[See Part III below]

Bob A

[Bob Armstrong]

Annex Chess Club Come What May Swiss - Blog

Rd. 1 – 19/5/13

Bob's Chess Blog # 1 [ Part III of 3 parts; see Parts I & II above]

My Score

0/1 pts.: Loss: 1 (Rd. 1).

My Opponents' & My Scores

1/1 pts. - Vinorth Vigneswaramoorthy (1699) – I lost in Rd. 1.

0/1 pts. - Me (1569)

Full Results

See ChessResults website (Canada)

Some History

TEMPLATE BEGINS

Bob's Blog

For a number of years now, I have been posting my chess blog:

i) on my personal Facebook Account for my almost 850 Fb friends from around the world (in English): https://www.facebook.com/bob.armstrong.9235;
ii) sometimes on the national Canadian English chess discussion board, Chess Talk [CT] (https://forum.chesstalk.com/…/chesstalk-canada-s-chess-disc…);
iii) occasionally on other chess websites, such as that of FQE (Province of Quebec's Chess Association). That time the blog was posted in both French and English.

More recently I also have been "re-posting" my Fb blog:

i) on my Fb chess discussion group, Chess Chat - A Project of Chess Companions of Caissa (https://www.facebook.com/groups/340524269771672/);
ii) my Scarborough CC tournaments Fb Blog to SCC's Fb Page (URL above)

Henry Lam (Aka Dark Knight), the recently new owner of CT, and I have an agreement (From the summer of 2018) that I will re-post my Fb Blogs on CT for both my chess club official tournaments, and my non-club weekend (Sometimes longer; sometimes shorter) tournaments, in which I play between Summer 2018 and Summer 2019. After that, Henry and I can then renew our agreement for another year if we both so wish.

So, under this agreement, most recently I have been re-posting my current Scarborough CC and Annex CC tournaments. My future non-club weekend blogs to and including Summer 2019 will be (Given my current schedule - from time to time, though, my life schedule may change so that I fit in a tournament not on my schedule):

1. The 2018 Hart House Holidays Open – Toronto (Prior to Christmas - Dec. 14-16/18) - Blogged;
2. The 2019 Hart House Reading Week Open – Toronto (February 16-18 – Only one short blog – having manic phase).
3. The 2019 Quebec Open – Longueuil (Next to Montreal) (July 21-7).
4. The 2019 Toronto Open (Aug. 31 – Sept. 2)

The National Canadian French Chess Discussion Board

Henri Hughes, a member of both the national English and French chess discussion boards (Chess Talk; Parlons Echecs), volunteers, subject to demands of his school studies, to translate my blogs into French, and post them to Parlons Echecs, also owned by Henry Lam. Thanks from all to Henri for his volunteer effort.

The Blog Focus

I mainly focus on the section I am playing in (Has been U 2000, U 1900 or U 1800). I feel that these class sections are often not covered by chess media, and yet, the bulk of chess tournament players are in the classes under 1900. And many of my class viewers have actually played players about whom I am blogging (Ones I play and ones with whom I may socialize during the tournament, who then are mentioned in the Blog). So this adds a bit more interest for them.

I do also generally cover (Bare Bones) the top section standings; but I have to have been able to get the results before the Blog goes to press. I sometimes will cover also the lower sections, if I have the results. For both, of course, it can be a matter of the time available (I am often doing my Blog in the wee hours of the morning).

I do hope my blogs will continue to provide a window onto class tournament chess, and what THIS chess player does in the day of club tournaments, and before and between rounds for weekend tournaments (A bit of a reality show - bits of my personal life).

I know many other chess players approach tournaments quite differently than I do (E.g. - study!), and so one cannot generalize from what I do.

Blog Feedback

Over the years, and in these more recent blogs, I have had generally positive feedback on my blogging, on both of my own Fb Accounts, the SCC & ACC Fb sites, and on CT.

It has been said that my writing style is easy to read, factual, and often entertaining. It is a find for all us "nosy" chess players!

Thanks to all those who have supported my Blogging on various sites, and kept encouraging me to continue.

Tournaments Registration History

2015

2015 Average per tournament: 54 registrations (Based on the last three tournaments of 2015 – highest yearly average since we started keeping records).

2016

Back to the Grind Swiss – 48 registrations (Peak registration for 2016)

2016 Average per tournament: 43 registrations (Down significantly from the prior year - 54).

2017

Peak registrations for 2017:

Club Championship – 60! registrants: Championship (1800+): 20; Reserves (U 1800): 40.

Summer in the City Swiss – 60! registrants: Masters 8; U 2200 – 7; U 1800 – 10; U 1400 – 12.

2017 Average per Tournament – 53 registrants (2nd highest since keeping records here)

2018

Changing Leaves Swiss - 59 registrants (Peak registration for 2018)

2018 Average per Tournament – 49 registrations (Down slightly from the annual record of 2015: 54 registrants).

2019 (Current)

# 1 – New Beginnings – 51 registrants: Crown: 11; U 1800: 22; U 1400: 18 – Down slightly from the annual record since keeping stats here: 54 registrations (2015).

# 2 – Club Championship - 50 registrants: Crown: 12; Reserve (U 1800): 38

# 3 – April Fool's - 51 registrants: Crown: 10; U 1800: 26; U 1400: 15

Average per Tournament (So far) – 51 (Slightly up from 2018's 49)

END OF TEMPLATE

Invitation

I am most happy to interact with readers re anything about which I have posted.....so react, comment, reply, post, etc. - both favourable comments and constructive criticism....I will do my best to respond to everyone, so long as I am where I have access to the internet.

And if some of the players, or non-players, wish to post something to supplement the blog, you are encouraged to do so.

So jump in with both feet, and we'll all enjoy the blogging adventure!

Bob A