Casual Meetup Nov 27, 374 Donald St, 11am-2pm

Mark Jenkins will host a casual chess meetup on Saturday November 27, 2021 from 11am to 2pm Winnipeg time. This will be a hybrid event, with opportunities to participate in person and remote.

This will be the first Rudolf Rocker Chess Club meetup with an in person component since early 2020.

Though the Millenium Library has re-opened to the public, gaming tables on the 2nd floor have not been restored.

As such, we will meet at a new venue until gaming returns to the library. The in-person component of the meetup will be at Skullspace, the 2nd floor of 374 Donald St. Skullspace is a hackerspace, a technology tinkering club where Mark Jenkins is a member. Event attendees will be considered to be Mark’s guests.

We regret that the venue is not mobility accessible. Climbing 3 flights of stairs (1.5 stories) is necessary to reach the 2nd floor.

The outside building door may be locked. If so, ring the small white doorbell labeled “sksp” and wait for someone to come down.

COVID-19 vaccine status of in-person attendees will not be verified. This policy should not be taken as expressing any kind of opposition to venue or employment mandates. The host is vaccinated and would suggest visiting a clinic would be the best use of your Saturday if you haven’t yet taken that step to protect our community. Future Rudolf Rocker casual chess meetups may very well have a vaccine status checks, potentially on a rotating on-off schedule or potentially come within the scope of Provincial mandates.

Under current public health orders, a small gathering of this kind is permissible. The most relevant public health orders are:

  • Masking mandate.
  • Event capacity: Only 10 attendees + the host will be permitted on a first come basis. A small number of Skullspace members may also be present for their own purposes. Generally, attendance at past meetups (pre-pandemic) has tended to be under this number anyway.
  • Distancing: Tables and boards will be set up for players to sit at far ends lengthwise, with the intention being to play casual untimed games where one player takes responsibility for moving pieces and the other calls out moves at a distance. A second board and piece set can be provided for the other end of the table on request.

Weather permitting, windows at the front of the space and the rear emergency escape will be partially opened for air flow.

The venue is 2,500 square feet, which provides lots of room to spread out. The tables described above will be in a classroom area at the entrance. Further into the space is a lounge with couches and coffee-tables that attendees can also spread out to and there’s also an area outside the classroom with a board table.

As a hackerspace, there are are also workshop areas with shelved hand tools, many with cutting ability, 3D printers with parts that are hot when operated, a drill press, an electronics area with soldering irons, and CNC milling machine. Chess club guests are asked to not interact with these things. The appropriate time for guests to come by for Skullspace member supervised access and tours of tools is during Tuesday night open house days at 6pm.

Minors are welcome, but close parental supervision is a necessity for children who are not old enough to be on their own in public. Parents should also keep in mind that many kids don’t have the attention span to play casual chess for 3 hours strait and should plan on a shorter visit.

Our event coincides with game #2 of the Carlsen Vs. Nepomniachtchi 2021 world championship. Being held in Dubai, that game starts at 6:30am Winnipeg time, but the long time control means there’s a good chance that the game will still be in progress at 11am Winnipeg time. Assuming the game is still in progress, we will have the commentary + audio available in the lounge area on projector and the board position (no audio) on the projector in the classroom area.

The online component of the meetup will be in the ##rockerchess-2021-11-27 channel on the Libera Chat IRC network. (Web interface ) Laptops will be present at the in-person meetup to allow for interaction with folks in the online component. If you’re in the chat channel, patiently wait to see if other folks in the channel are active, ask active folks for a game and exchange lichess (https://lichess.org/) usernames. Assume the other person wants to pay untimed, casual (not rated) on lichess unless you negotiate other playing conditions.

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