Tournament Poster

For more information, go to the tournament news page, on the right hand side.

Click on the image to make it bigger.

You can click on this sentence to enter online.

:-)

League results from Rnd 4

I am very proud to annouce that we have won our third league match in a row!
Hoofweg Primary brought 11 players and we have won ALL of the games.

Afterwards we played a number of friendlies and it was good to see in what spirit all the games were played in.  Some of their players will also be participating in our next tournament. (See the tournament news page to the right hand side, for more information).

Some statistics:
Round 1 against Durbanville - Lost 2.5 / 3.5
Round 2 against Totius - Won 4 / 2
Round 3 against Riebeeck Str - Won 6 / 0
Round 4 against Hoofweg - Won 6 / 0 (actually 11 / 0, if you include the B-teams)

There may be more league games in the third term, but the fixtures are not decided yet.  I will keep you posted.

Congratulations to every player, and also a word of thanks out to Ms. Suzanne Grobler for the use of your classroom.

25 May 2012 - League game 4 - The players

Good day to all.

On Tuesday, I started a knock-out 'tournament' to give the up and coming players a chance to get into the league matches.  I picked 16 players (8 regular league players and 8 up and coming players) to play each other to see who plays today.

On Thursday, I got extremely good news - our opponents are sending 2 teams!  This means that 12 players will get the chance to play, in stead of 6!

We finished our 'tournament' today during first break and the results are in!
The top 3:

1 - Enrico Davids            3.5 / 4
2 - Clint van Rooyen       3.0 / 4
3 - Liam Meyer              3.0 / 4

Then the rest of the "A"-team includes,
4 - Trevor Rademeyer    2.5 / 4
5 - JJ Oosthuizen            2.5 / 4
6 - Cheran Melite           2.0 / 4 *

* Cheran played in the place of Gary Hess from the second round, who won his first round.  Thus I cannot credit Cheran with Gary's win.  That is why the full results will display Cheran's name in second spot.

Then the "B"-team will consists of the following players.  The came in position 7 to 12.

1 - Chad Mckenzie
2 - Craig Strydom
3 - Wikus van Niewholtz
4 - David Combrinck
5 - Jacques Claasen
6 - Wouter Rademeyer

Other names that must be mentioned, that also participated, included:
Ravian Daniels (Round 1)
Mambesi Mnana (Round 1)
Gary Hess (Round 1)
Ndinani Sibelekwani
Zukhanye Mqumbisa
Mickyla du Preez  (Round 2 - 4)
Kyle Mallach   (Round 2 - 4)

I will keep you posted with the results, after we finish our matches this afternoon.

:-)

Tournament News (enter here)

Our next tournament will be taking place on the 8th of June., at 14:00 in the afternoon.
It will have the same format as the previous one we had.

This time, we will have medals to the top 3 and participation certificates to all players.

I will scan in the poster as it is displayed in the hallways in school on the blog as soon as I can.

If you want to enter online, click here on this link.

More information will follow very soon.

:-)

Friday 18 May 2012 League results

Last Friday, the 18th of May, we played in our second last league game of the 2nd term.

We played at home against Riebeeck Str Primary, and I am very proud to announce that ALL of our players won their games!!!  Congratulations to the team.

The team were as follows:

1 - Clint van Rooyen
2 - Enrico Davids
3 - JJ Oosthuizen
4 - Liam Meyer
5 - Trevor Rademeyer
6 - Ravian Daniels

Reserves:
Jacques Claassen and Mambesi Mnana.

Afterwards, these eight boys played each other in a quick 3 round 'mini-tournament'.

They had to play the last round during break on Monday (a couple of minutes ago), and the results are in:

In first place: Clint van Rooyen
Second: Ravian Daniels
Third: Trevor Rademeyer

League game results

League results:

Our first league game took place on the 13th of April, vs Durbanville Primary.
We unfortunatly lost 2,5 - 3,5.  Very close.

On Friday (11 May 2012), we played in our second league game of the year, against Totius.
We won the game *4 - 2!  This was our first win in more than a year!  :-)

We had wins on boards nr. 1, 3, and 5.
Our team consisted out of the following players:
Playing on board:
1 - Clint van Rooyen
2 - Wouter Rademeyer
3 - JJ Oosthuizen
4 - Liam Meyer
5 - Jacques Claassen
6 - Craig van Rooyen *  (The other team didn't have a sixth player, which meant Craig won by default.)

Congratulations to our team. I am very proud of you!  Even more so if you keep last years' result of losing 0.5 - 5.5 in mind.

This coming Friday we are playing away against Hoofweg Primary.

Please see the IMPORTANT MESSAGE BAR above for more information regarding this weeks practices.

Yours in chess.

Mr. Bekker

PS: I will put up the photos that I took, as soon as my technical difficulty regarding my internet at home, is resolved.  (That is also the reason why this blog has been so quite the last week.)

A very famous chess game: The Night at the Opera

This game was played in 1858 at the interlude of Night at the Opera, as the great Paul Morphy was invited to Paris' Opera by two quite strong chess aficionados; Duke Karl of Brunswick and Count Isouard who consulted together but couldn't hold their ground more than 16 moves. The game is one of chess history's most famous one's...


This game is one of the most played games ever!  Play it over and see why.


Click here to go to a website, where you can see the game being played move for move on the internet, at your click.


The game is as follows:


1. e4             e5 
2. Nf3          d6 
3. d4             Bg4 
4. dxe5         Bxf3 
5. Qxf3        dxe5 
6. Bc4          Nf6 
7. Qb3         Qe7 
8. Nc3          c6 
9. Bg5           b5
10. Nxb5      cxb5 
11. Bxb5+    Nbd7 
12. O-O-O   Rd8
13. Rxd7       Rxd7 
14. Rd1        Qe6 
15. Bxd7+    Nxd7
16. Qb8+      Nxb8 
17. Rd8#
        1 - 0
Excellent win for white!

Puzzle #12

This one is a bit difficult, but do-able!
:-)

Puzzle #11

Chess puzzle 10

# 10

Comment if you can see the answer.

Puzzle #8 and #9

The next two puzzles, are games that I or the learners have played this year.

Don't forget to visit the puzzle webpage daily for new puzzles.  See the link at the right hand side's column.

Both of the puzzles below are Black to move and put white in checkmate, in one move:

Notated games 2

The following game, I played against Ndinani "Didi" Sibelewkani, in grade 5E1.

Both him and I made a mistake, see if you can spot it.

Click to enlarge.

As you can see, this game is not finished.  It is black to move, what would you do?

Comment on the post and I will reply as soon as I can.

Notated game 1

I'm going to post some games that I notated, that all our learners can learn out of.  I want to encourage the learners to notate the games that they play, and then to show it to me afterwards.  I may scan it in, to post that on the blog as well.

Click on the picture below to enlarge it.

Play the game over on a board at home, and see where Ruan made his mistake.

Discovered Check

Discoverd Attack

Double Check

A double check is when two of your pieces are checking your opponent at the same time.  The only way for him to escape check is to move his King, because capturing either checking piece would still expose the King to check by the other attacking piece.  Blocking the check is also inadaquate, fort he same reason: Here, Black played Bxd3+

Do you see what that does? It looks like Black can just take the marauding Bishop...but he can’t! Black is in check from the Bishop and the Rook!  His only option is to move his King, and there is only one square to move it to.  So he plays Kg1.

Now, he does Black bring it home?  He plays Rf1#, checkmate!  What a whopper!  Of course, White can’t take the Rook with King, because the Bishop is defending it.  At the beginning, Black was down a Queen and Pawn for a Bishop, a 7 point difference.  And now, he has White mated!  He couldn’t have doen it without the help of a double check.

Click on the small photo below to display all three boards and text in one 'photo'.

Click on picture to enlarge

The Fork

The Fork

In a fork, you attack two or more of your opponent’s pieces in one move.  Because ge cab only move one at a time, he will have to give one up to your attacker.  A fork is sometimes called a ‘double attack’.

In the diagram below, what move can White make to capture Black’s Queen?  Thats right – Nf7+.  Do you see what that does?  Not only is Black in check, his Queen is attacked, too!  After the King moves, White will chop off the Queen with Nxd8.  If it were Black’s move, however, he could play b5.  This forks White’s Bishop and Knight!  White can only save one, and the other is doomed.

The Skewer

The Skewer

A Skewer is, in a way, a backwards pin.  For example, in the position at the bottom, White’s position is in shambles, being down a full Rook.  Desperatly, he plays Re1+. Voila! Black’s King is attacked. “No problem,” Black thinks, and he moves his King to safety with Kd5.  But then Whites playes Rxe8, pocketing the Knight.  Where did that come from?  It was a skewer in action.

But there is an even better move for White.  Do you see it? What piece must he play, and where must he move it to, so that the Black Rook is attacked?  White can win the Rook back, thanks to a skewer.

The Pin

The Pin

Two types of pins are demonstrated in the diagram at the bottom.  White’s white-squared Bishop is pinning Black’s Queen to the King in an absolute pin.  In an absolute pin, the pinned piece (Black’s Queen) can’t move away, because it would leace the King under attack.

Black’s white-squared Bishop is also pinning White’s Knight to the Queen.  The difference here is that this pin is a relative pin.  The pinned piece is able to move, but doing so would bring great harm to his position.  Here if the Knight moves, the Queen would be capured by the Black Bishop.