Greetings to fans of the Rudolf Rocker Chess Club,

We are now wrapping up our second year of hosting casual chess every Saturday noon to 4pm. I am proud that we have demonstrated the viability of a drop in chess club located downtown that makes rent by donation vs charging for memberships and is open every single week.

Attendance and donations have been very strong in the last three months in particular and we’re impressed by the scholastic and CFC tournament performance of club attendees.

As we start year three, we have decided it is time to open up our organizing committee to more people. Jamie and I (Mark) have been opening and closing every week and also receiving a lot of assistance from folks in attendance, Theo in particular. To make the club stronger, lighten the load on Jamie and I, and to ensure we continue to never miss a week we are expanding the organizing committee to include more responsible folks who love enabling casual chess.

To join our all-volunteer organizing committee, we require that you sign up in the next three months (May-July 2016) for a commitment to do three open/close shifts for casual days or organize one special event like a tournament, simul, or other chess related event like a workshop if they are designed to create high attendance and revenue.

Opening and closing a club day requires your to be responsible for the following:

• Checking our venue’s calendar to open the correct room. (we can be booked in any one of three rooms at 91 Albert) We will provide access to the keys.
• Showing up on time for opening at noon.
• Moving tables, chairs, equipment and cash box into position for club use, often requiring effort up and down stairs.
• Greeting newcomers, offering them extra attention in getting the opportunity to learn and play.
• Letting attendees know that voluntary donations allow the club to make rent and run casual chess week in and week out and showing appreciation for said donations.
• Room cleanup up to the standards of our venue, and commencing this cleanup in time to be out of the room by 4pm if there is another booking right after us.

We will train you in all of these things and be available to support you carrying out this work.

Organizing a special event requires all the above plus:

• Ensuring the largest room of our venue is booked specifically well in advance so we have room for a special event to hold a crowd.
• Marketing the event well in advance of the day, including direct contacts with other parts of the chess community to give us the greatest reach
• Pricing the event appropriately to ensure the event is both well attended and earns revenue for the club
• Operating the special event up to the standards expected by the chess community (this is particularly important for tournaments)
• If the event is a tournament, ensuring tournament specific rules are posted in advance

As a member of the organizing committee we will include you in the internal discussion process whenever the club has bigger decisions to make.

We will be wrapping up our organizer calendar for May-July at the April 30th club day, so if you would like to volunteer to open/close and be part of the organizing committee in that period, please let us know in advance of or at club that day. If you’re not able to attend, please let us know by email which days you would like to commit to.

Auxilary volunteer assistance to help us with the above workload is also welcome at any time. If you’d like to volunteer for us in the May-July period, but can’t commit to three shifts or a special event, let us know. At this time we also welcome offers to help us organize in the August-October, 2016 quarter.

Mark Jenkins
Co-founder and treasurer
club@rockerchess.ca

Simultaneous chess exhibition with National Candidate Master Isaac Wiebe.

Where: 3rd Floor 91 Albert Street
When: noon-4pm, Saturday February 20, 2016
Doors at noon, simul starts at 12:30.

Admission: $15

Discounted admission to $10 for players registered in the Canadian Chess Challenge (Scholastic Chess Association of Manitoba).

Isaac is the 3rd highest active rated player in Manitoba and the only one in the top 3 without a master title. He’s climbed from a 1654 to 2245 Chess Federation of Canada rating in only 16 months. As the Manitoban most likely to become our next master, we’re giving you a chance to slow his ascent!

Isaac has agreed to pass on the usual convention of playing white on all boards to play alternating white and blacks.

Lecture to follow.

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A five round rapid swiss tournament with half of entry fees ($15) supporting the club and the other half forming the prize fund.

Where: 3rd floor, 91 Albert St.
Date: Saturday January 30, 2016
Time: Registration closes at 1pm, pairings announced shortly after. Doors open at noon for setup, registration and casual play.

Entry fee: $15

Time control: 15 minutes + 5 second delay

Prizes: to be based on entries. 75% of prize fund will go towards overall prizes, 25% will be used as under prizes for the bottom 1/3 of the field, unless there are few low rated players, in which case adjustments will be made. See further details below. Additional prize sponsors welcome, please contact us

Parking: See this parking guide . The two hour street meters (first two hours free) are not advised as we’ll have tight starts between rounds. Save the hassle and park in a lot.

Tournament specific rules

1. Touch move. Will not be enforced strictly for castling. (proper way is to move the king first)
2. Cell phone ban. First instance, game in progress or next round is forfeited, next instance, out of tournament. We welcome players in the vicinity of a cell phone going off to pause their clock and to help point the arbiter in the direction of the infraction.
3. The first illegal move made will result in a one minute penalty (if claimed), unless either player has less than 4 minutes on their clock, in which case the illegal move immediately results in a loss if claimed. Second illegal move will always result in a loss. Arbiters will not point out illegal moves as per FIDE laws of chess, a claim should be made. We will not penalize a player for claiming a win for illegal move if they capture a king illegally left in check. (but you really should just pause the clock and claim the win that way)
4. Regarding 50 move (since pawn move or any capture) and 3 move repetition draws: games are not required to be recorded as per FIDE laws of chess Appendix A.4.b and we don’t recommend doing so. As such, we don’t expect that anyone is going to claim these kinds of draws by writing the relevant move down down prior to making the claim as per FIDE laws of chess 9.2.a and 9.3a. But, it is permissible to pause the clock and attempt a draw claim on your own turn as per FIDE laws of chess 9.2b and 9.3b if you believe your opponents previous move was the 50th move or later or has created the third or later repetition for a position. Because there is no writing of the moves by the players and no assistant arbiter or fancy e-board recording the games to help us evaluate such claims, we will resolve them as follows. i) if your opponent agrees with the draw claim, the matter is so resolved, if  not ii)  an arbiter or a designated assistant watching the game can deem the claim valid or invalid by their own observation, claims that are denied by not in the opinion of the arbiter made in bad faith will not be penalized,  or iii) if the arbiter or designated assistant is not watching the game, the arbiter should be notified that a draw claim was made but not agreed up, and play will continue with an arbiter or assistant to continue watching it there after. The arbiter and assistant’s will also endeavor to declare games drawn as per FIDE laws of chess 9.6 if by their own observations there have been 75 or more moves without a pawn move or capture or 5 or more repetitions of position.

Detailed cash prize allocation formula

Half of entries will go to prizes. Prize fund will be divided into a overall leaders pool and under prize pool if at least 5 under 1600 CFC and/or CFC unrated players are registered. Otherwise, the entire prize fund will be for overall leaders.

The under prize pool will be for lowest ranked 1/3 of field, at our discretion we made move the cut-off line a few places to reflect rating clusters.

Under prize elligibility for players without CFC ratings but with ratings from other over the board settings will be determined by the tournament directory.

If there are two prize pools, they will be composed as follows:

1st place will take up to the first $50 in available funds
2nd place will take up to the next $20
3rd place will take up to the next $10
The next $30 will be allocated 50% to 1st, 25% to 2nd, 25% to 3rd.
The next $10 will go to forth
Any remaining proportionally equally between 1st-4th
1st place under prize for bottom 1/3 will take up first $25
2nd place under prize will take up next $15
Next $5 will go to first place under
Any remaining under prize monies will be allocated equally to 1st and 2nd under
If there is only one pool (due to few under 1600 entries), the same overall prize rule above will absorb the entire pool

There will be no chess club at 91 Albert on Saturday October 31.

Instead we will be hosting a tournament at the The Neon Factory, at 594 Main Street. This tournament will be a FUN rapid tournament. The plan is to have 5 rounds with a time control of 25 minutes. The entry fee will be $5.00! All of the money raised from the entry fee will make up 100% of the prizes. Lunch will be included!

Doors open at noon. Registration ends at 12:30

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The Millionaire Open starts today.

One very cool feature of this tournament is that they use DGT boards to broadcast the moves from the top board of each under section. I’m going to grab some of the under 1600 games that will be played and make analyzing them my theme of the day this Saturday (October 10). I’ll also have a laptop out so we can watch some of the games in progress.

Also of note, Winnipeg’s own John Remillard is playing in the under 1800 section, if he’s fortunate enough to find himself on top board, we’ll definitely be looking at that.

At 3pm I’m going to put on the video broadcast of the tournament.

Here are last years under 1400 and under 1600 games

The CFC has a formal system for being recognized as a class player or title holder that includes being able to achieve classes and titles with three performances norms and a base rating. These make for interesting incremental goals and opportunities to recognize good performances.

As Silman says, you can’t just shoot for master, it’s good to set goals for levels in between.

Along those lines, here are the norms achieved in the September Tuesday Night Tournament (Arsen Aban Memorial):

• Jeff Clark scored his first expert (national candidate master) norm
• Will Bonness scored his 2nd class B norm and 3rd and final class C norm. Congratulations Will, you are now officially a class C player. Even without norms he is very close to have a rating over 1700 (other path to class B) once he reaches 24 games.
• Rayan Roy scored his first class B norm
• Ken Marshall scored his first class E norm
• Carter Marshall scored 0/5, but based on the strength of his opponents this is good enough to still count as his first class E norm

I’ll be coming back and seeking my first class C norm in the November/December TNT — in a previous post I claimed to have already done this, but the relevant tournaments didn’t include the required 5 games which is part of the rules for CFC title/class norms.

A five round rapid swiss tournament with half of entry fees ($15) supporting the club and the other half forming the prize fund

Where: 3rd floor, 91 Albert St.
Date: Saturday October 17, 2015
Time: doors open at noon, registration closes and round 1 pairings announced at 12:30

Parking: See this parking guide . The two hour street meters (first two hours free) are not advised as we’ll have tight starts between rounds. Save the hassle and park in a lot.

Entry fee: $15

Prizes: 75% of prize fund will go towards overall prizes, 25% will be used as under prizes for the bottom 1/3 of the field, unless there are few low rated players, in which case adjustments will be made.

Time control: 10+5

Other rules to be announced.

Sponsors welcome, please contact us

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See Pawn Sacrifice (drama film about Bobby Fischer) with other chess players, and get some chess in beforehand.

Gather for chess at the mall tables between 4:30 and 6:30 on Wednesday September 30, then grab threatre seats for 6:55pm show time. (or keep playing chess until 7:05, skip the ads and crane your neck with a front row seat, see if I care!)

Suggestion, before joining the mall tables for chess buy your ticket first! (you can buy them online right now at or in person day of)

In addition to the 6:55pm showtmie, this film also shows at this location at 12:35, 3:35, and 9:55pm every day between now and Thursday Oct 1. There are also show times at Cineplex McGillvary with the same date span.

Tickets at Landmark Cinemas Grant Park are $10.50 general admission, $8.50 for children 3-13, $8.99 if you’re 65+, that price includes all taxes.

Most of the mall tables are at centre court just west of the doors between McNally Robinson and the mall corridor.

There are not a lot of tables and I’m not sure how vigorously mall security tries to keep them open. Our film tickets alone may not be enough (the theatre has it’s own lobby with limited seating), it may help if many of us have food and beverage items from the mall.

The Manitoba Film Classification board has rated this film PG, which means everyone is admitted, parental guidance is advised, most suitable for viewers over 12. Has a “Not recommended for young children” (8 and under warning) and “language may offend” warnings. The MPAA also points out there is a little bit of implied sex (Toby McGuire goes topless!) and plenty of “historical smoking” as was common in the years 1951-1972.

My honest opinion, your sensitive 10 year old chess kid will be fine and probably not come home worried they’re on track to be the next Paul Morphy or likely to have mom and dad move out on them them at age 16! Do we even have any 10 year olds in Winnipeg who are so chess obsessed that they’re already playing at the expert or higher level?

Pawn Sacrifice is a really good movie.

As a chess fan I could write a quibbling review on historical inaccuracies, but that’s not a fair way to judge a drama “based on a true story”. The good news is that many of the really dramatic things that actually happened in the lead-up to and during the 1972 world championship made it into the film and played a significant role in moving the plot forward. In particular, I applaud the film makers for depicting 29… Bxh2? (* see note) from game one and 11…Nh5!? from game three. They pulled these off without any substantial technical explanation as to why these moves caused a such stir. But, no such explanation was required, the reactions these particular moves created in observers was powerful enough.

I had only one near “what the hell” moment near the end. There was pre-round 6 hyperbole that such a round could pretty much decide the whole thing. You don’t have to be a chess player to understand that a score of 4 1/2 vs 3 1/2 after six rounds in an up to 24 round match isn’t insurmountable. At least this kind of hype was said by media talking heads and not by the player characters and/or their entourages.

But, after seeing it through, making round 6 the climax of the film was actually good story telling. To have dragged us through most of the subsequent rounds in some kind of silly fast-forward montage would have killed the dramatic tension every good climax requires. Towards this end, there is actually one historical cheat that I want to single out and praise. I won’t spoil this with specifics but an incredible turn of events that actually happened in a much later round was placed into round 5 and had the audience laughing out loud as it helped us chug forward to the dramatic ending.

Every good drama delivers an emotional roller coaster, and Pawn Sacrifice pulls it off even if you know the plot outcome. At the moment of triumph, I actually had to take a deep breath to avoid bursting into joy-tears. Only a few other film titles have done that, and the only one I’ll admit to here in public is one of my other geek favorites, Apollo 13.

I’m not sure how much credit the middle of the film deserves for building us to such a dramatic ending. Something about them middle felt a little slow. Were there too many scenes consisting of searches for listening bugs or freak outs over a door being knocked? It’s okay to have a thematic device that is repeated, but perhaps a few less repetitions were required. (or perhaps I shouldn’t have watched the trailer so many times!)

Remarkably these kinds of scenes were pulled off empathetically and we’re able to avoid the outcome of having pity for our protagonist freak show at a safe distance. I think as much credit is due to the cinematography and sound design as the acting for pulling this off.

Early parts of the film covering Fischer’s youth could have been a little longer and less rushed if some of the things repeated in the middle took up less of the runtime. We are simply told by the Paul Marshall character that he’s a “poor kid from Brooklyn”. We could have been shown a little bit more of this deprivation and how in such an environment a kid could become obsessed with chess. The first scene of him as a bored and neglected child at a party of his mother’s communist friends was a good try in this direction, but ultimately a party, even one lacking opulence doesn’t scream “poverty!”. But, all credit due, this opening was a major success in establishing an origin story for his paranoia.

Another mind blowing Fischer youth fact that I hoped the audience absorbed was his mother moving out and leaving the apartment to him to live in on his own in his late teens. We are told this by another character, an empty (or emptying) apartment isn’t actually shown. I felt there was some risk that this significant life event didn’t sink in with being told vs shown.

Pardon the chess analogy, but these imperfections of the opening and mid-game are were not fatal. Overall they were quite well played. And I must end with additional emphasis that the end-game was sharp and decisive. Two thumbs up.

(* I won’t be crying in my cola tonight that the film truncated history by having Fischer resign game one immediately after 30 g3. See Yasser Seirawan’s recent lecture for some in-depth on the reality that Fischer played on through the adjournment and even still had drawing chances for awhile after this fateful and famous move.)

Manitoba champion FM Kevin Gentes will offer a simultaneous exhibition on September 12, 2015 12:30pm.

Admission: $10, discount to $5 for K-12 juniors,
Location: third floor, 91 Albert Street
Day: September 12, 2015
Time: 12:30

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Yussupov-Gentes 1986