Received from Czech tour organiser Jan Mazuch....

Dear chessfriends,

Let us invite you most cordially to this year's upcoming tournaments held within the frame of 16th CZECH TOUR 2016 / 2017 Series:

1. - 8. 10. 2016 7th HRADEC KRALOVE OPEN

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9. - 15. 10. 2016 8th PILSNER OPEN

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For the first time in history the World Senior Championship will be held in the Czech Republic. The championship will be played in categories men and women over 50 and 65 years of age and it will take place on 18. 11. - 1. 12. 2016 in the town of Marianske Lazne. Players can participate in this tournament without reference to their rating. Regulations are available on <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.wscc2016.net">http://www.wscc2016.net</a><!-- m -->.

With best regards

Dr. Jan Mazuch, Director of CZECH OPEN & CZECH TOUR
CZECH OPEN - International Chess and Games Festival - <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.czechopen.net">http://www.czechopen.net</a><!-- m -->
CZECH TOUR - International Chess Festivals Series - <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.czechtour.net">http://www.czechtour.net</a><!-- m -->
International Chess Calendar - <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://calendar.avekont.cz/">http://calendar.avekont.cz/</a><!-- m -->


For those who prefer their tournaments closer to home, October also sees the popular Dundee and Angus Congress as well as Glasgow hosting one of the new Blitz tournaments (the Edinburgh event is on September 30th) Please see the calendar on our home page
Kind regards,

Andy Burnett
(CS International Director)

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It appears that there hasn't been a ChessScotland council meeting since March 2015. Is this correct? I can't find any minutes of the council meeting scheduled to have taken place on 30th April 2016.

Judging success by seeding positions is pointless. You need 3 players to significantly perform above their ratings in order to get results. The women managed this and I'd say they had a (relatively) successful tournament. Whether it's right that female 1600s get more funding than male 2300s is another question.

Open team: In order to measure success you first need to have targets. What are the objectives of Scotland at the Olympiad?

To perform (relatively) well? Clearly not. If this were an ambition then we would not be spending £400-500 (est.) per head on (mostly) rusty players. Surely some practice games or training beforehand would indicate that we are serious.

To progress players? Not really, hard to say. Andrew on board 1 was correct, but putting the 2015 Scottish Champion on 5 when he had shown encouraging signs the year before while boards 2 and 4 simply sat on their ratings was wrong.

Norms? Norms are nice and they are worth double at Olympiads. But this should not be a primary objective at a team competition.

An opportunity for part-timers to have a holiday? This one is a little unfair, but when you see people playing for a draw with White it does make you wonder....


For the life of me I can't figure out if there is a clear goal. Please help.

Hi Folks,

Yes forms should be out, however, EE and BT have mucked up my transfer of home phone and broadband so I can't get on internet. Typing this at school between classes.

Main points fee £100 Venue Carnegie Conference Campus Date Last Sunday in October (30th??)

Let me know on noticeboard if you are sending teams and I'll formally get stuff out as soon as I can

GG

Pay fee on day before play

I noticed on the update today some Lanarkshire school results on the main grading database list. Can someone please explain to me why ChessScotland are grading these games (and for free)?
It's great that plenty of primary schools in some areas have kids actively playing chess but the results are irrelevant for grading purposes. A far as I can make out, virtually none of these children play outside their school or area. By grading these games on the main list they are achieving artificially high and totally false grades which needlessly clutter up the order as far as Scotland wide junior grading is concerned.
These children are never considered for international selection purposes ( certainly not by me when I was a selector).
Would it not make more sense for the organisers of these school events to have an internal "ladder" structure independent of ChessScotland to reflect their results?

Dear chess players and fans, I am young and enthusiastic chess coach who loves to work with passionate chess players all around the world and I decided to start my own new youtube channel. I' am chess coach from eastern Europe, I'm currently working as a chess coach in schools and teaching kids from 5 years old, I am also helping an international master as his second and helping him with opening repertoire and I have a few private students from USA. I'm young adult but I have spent over 10 years on playing chess in different tournaments, I had an opportunity and privilege of being a private student of two international masters for 4 years. I'm also studying at university and finishing my degree. Chess is my passion, it's the first thing I think of every morning and that's the main reason I wanted to make some videos and share it with the community of chess. It's brand new experience for me and I know it's far from perfect but those are very exciting to make and I am more than happy if at least one viewer improves his chess knowledge

I will upload chess videos including every aspect of the game: positional play (pawn levers, how to play with different pawn structures, how to improve your pieces, prophylaxis, manoeuvring, playing against weakness to mention a few), tactical skills (explaining how to become a better tactical player, how to to improve your calculations), opening repertoire (newest chess opening books included, explaining the main ideas and plans behind the moves), endgame studies (step by step explaining every major endgame). The material will be taken from my own analysis, newest chess books and I'm gonna retell what my IM coaches learned me. I do it because I love to do it.

Channel link: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsDiImlR7w3lAt3tGUo-Z7Q">https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsDiIm ... t3tGUo-Z7Q</a><!-- m -->

If you liked the videos and want to say thanks, please subscribe!

Sad to report the passing of Henry Lynn, one of the original founding members of East Kilbride Chess Club.
The funeral service will be 2.45 on Monday, 05 September 2016 at South Lanarkshire Crematorium.

Looking forward to the chess today. USA taking no chances with both Caruana and Nakamura playing. Should be fun.

Hi all,

All our players have arrived safely in Baku and we are now happily esconced in the very nice Radisson Park Inn hotel.

I attended the opening ceremony with the entire women's team this evening. The Open team were either still travelling or bedecked in stripey pyjamas (I'm not naming names) and couldn't make it.

It was a reasonably short and pleasant ceremony for the most part, although the captain's meeting descended into farce at times with discussion of the new 'anti-cheating guidelines', followed by a stupidly-long journey back to the hotel. Fortunately all the players missed out on the tiresome part of the evening!

The draw for round 1 should be up soon and I will updating this thread as often as possible. We are seeded 63/180 in the Open section and 69/140 in the women's, seeding s which would generally give us 'softer' round 1 pairings, but in the women's especially we could end up facing one of the 'monster' teams from China, Ukraine or Russia!

Please show your support for the teams by posting here and generally taking an interest in their progress in Baku. Kind words go a long way to boosting confidence!

Many thanks,
Andy Burnett

Quote:There are currently no training events