|
|
This is the FREESERVER REMOTE SITEBack to - Main STC Bunch Archive Page |
|
Short and sweet this month. I guess everyone is used to me being late with this Journal. The summer work season is on me with a vengence.
Some of you may notice that I've updated the last article in this Journal with the country/state names of those members who have stated to me this data. Those who have a blank in the Member's DataBase will be receiving a message from me soon. This data is also posted at the web site under the locations button, and is presented in table format.
Enjoy ...
wad from FICS found this pearl at:
<http://slate.msn.com/culturebox/entries/01-05-23_106137.asp>
and is reprinted here without permission.
How to play street chess without getting scammed.
By Matt Gaffney
Wednesday, May 23, 2001, at 10:00 a.m. PT
Springtime is upon us, and with it, scrappy chess players return to the urban landscapes of America's cities. In Boston, they play at Harvard Square. In New York, they play in Washington Square Park. In San Francisco, they play at the corner of Market and Powell. They've also been Hollywoodized in the movies Fresh and Searching for Bobby Fischer. Can you play them without getting scammed?
In his 2000 book The Virtue of Prosperity, Dinesh D'Souza describes how he got taken for a ride on the streets of San Francisco. Though "no Gary Kasparov," D'Souza is "a decent enough player" who "can usually give the bums a fair game." While playing for $5 he was "measurably ahead" after 15 minutes. " 'I'll be right back,' my opponent excused himself. 'I have to take a shit.' He made his way to a nearby hotel visible from the street." Well, a few minutes later one of the spectators pointed out the obvious to D'Souza: The guy wasn't coming back, and D'Souza wasn't getting his five bucks.
These chess hustlers, as they're commonly called, play for money, and they play well, but they don't always play honestly. Here are some tips for going up against these crafty combatants.
-- Don't Get Your Clock Cleaned
In most cases, chess hustlers will play speed chess, where each side has five minutes to complete all their moves. If you run over your five minutes, you lose, no matter how well you're doing. The problem is, the clock may sometimes be on your opponent's team.
In Washington, D.C., where I live, the chess gathering spot is Dupont Circle. Last Sunday I lost $10 there over a two-hour period against a chess hustler. Funny thing, though‹he wasn't moving any faster than I was, but when my clock was down to one minute or less, his would still be up at four or four-and-a-half minutes. The clock was rigged.
If you suspect the clock has been tampered with, there's a simple solution: Ask your opponent to put the clock on the other side of the board. That way, you switch clocks, making you the one with the sympathetic timepiece. If the hustler refuses or makes some excuse to stop playing, you know you got clocked. This is entirely within the rules as long as you have the black pieces; to compensate for the disadvantage of moving second, black gets to choose which side of the board the clock goes on.
-- Rules Check, Mate
Verify the clock rules. There are two ways to play speed chess, touch-move or (more commonly) clock-move. Touch-move means that if you touch a piece, you have to move it. Clock-move means that your move is not done until you punch your clock, which means you can touch a knight, move it, and take your hand off it, but if you haven't punched your clock yet, you're still allowed to put the knight back and make another move altogether.
More than once I've seen the fish tourist shocked with a cry of "Touch-move!" from the hustler. Clock-move is more common, but most people will be too flustered to argue, especially in an unfamiliar setting.
-- Tally Ho!
Keep track of the tally. The guy last week pulled this one on me, too. When chess players play several blitz games at once, they mentally keep track of the tally. A chess hustler will often tack on an extra game in his favor. "What are we at?" I asked the guy at Dupont. "I'm up three," he said, even though he was only up two. I didn't feel like arguing the point, but I checked each game thereafter.
-- Keep Tabs on the Tab
Verify the amount you're playing for after each game. This is another scam, especially against an obvious tourist. Losing three games to the chess master and finding out you're down $15‹instead of the $6 you'd thought‹is unpleasant, and unpleasant to argue about.
OK, so those are the scams. Now, how about the chess? The key in blitz chess is to play aggressively. If the opportunity arises to attack, take it, even if it doesn't look totally sound. Obviously, it shouldn't look totally unsound either, but if you can't decide, go for it! Defense is much more difficult in chess than attack, and even more so in blitz chess.
One final thing. If you do lose a few bucks to these guys, legitimately or not, hand it over with a smile. It's probably a small amount of money, and maybe you learned a thing or two about chess - or chess hustling.
In the Part 2 section of the Newsletter, we discovered how to organize a Swiss tournament through the use of some simple organizational tools or forms. This time, we shall endeavor to examine the beginning of the tournament, first set of pairings, getting all the clocks set the same, TD announcements, and the like.
Pairings in the first round of a Swiss System tournament are very simple. You simply have the top half of the club or group play the bottom half. There are some easy rules to follow which make this part of the tournament quick. Remember your pairings cards (Part 2), now is when you get to use them. After you have sorted the cards into ratings order and assigned a numerical identification to each card (best to start with 1 ... n) you ask the top rated player to determine the outcome of a coin tossed in the air. If he predicts it correctly, he gets to choose which color he will assume in the first round and if not, the number 2 player picks.
Now you take your pairings cards and determine whether or not you have an odd number. If so, either assign a club player, or issue a bye (that means a no pairing option for a player in that round) to the lowest rated player in the group. The reason you pick on the poor lowest rated player is the assumption that chances are very good that he will not affect the outcome of the tournament by receiving a full point first round bye (that's right, he gets a point anyway, as if he won) which is usually a happy occurrence for lower rated players, as they usually are suffering from tournament nerves anyway and take the opportunity to watch the better players play.
Do you remember the two panels of the wall chart from last time which gave the pairings? Here's how we derived it. The top rated player chose to play black in the first round. So alternating colors in the first 17 pairing cards we had: (White is on the left) our cards side by side going from highest rating to lowest, where Varuzhan Akobian 2401 was the highest and Matthew Cavalieri 1037 was the lowest. Note in the pairing cards laid side by side, how the colors alternate starting with Black all the way through each board. This then is how the first round is paired.
| No | Name | Rtg | Total | Rslt | Name | Rtg | Total |
| 1 | FRANK W PYE (18) | 1923 | VARUZHAN AKOBIAN (1) | 2401 | |||
| 2 | DAVID E VIGORITO (2) | 2393 | ERIC S BAUGUS (19) | 1900 | |||
| 3 | JOHN TRIVETT (20) | 1900 | EARL W PRUNER (3) | 2294 | |||
| 4 | PATRICK HUMMEL (4) | 2279 | BURTON FISHER (21) | 1886 | |||
| . | |||||||
| . | |||||||
| . | |||||||
| 15 | MICHAEL BOLTON (32) | 1311 | MIKE BRUNS (15) | 2065 | |||
| 16 | RICHARD ABBEY (16) | 2009 | GEORGE B VAUGHAN (33) | 1273 | |||
| 17 | MATTHEW CAVALIERI (34) | 1037 | JOHN BROWN (17) | 1958 | |||
At this point, before you put the wall charts up and "announce" that pairings are ready, you go back to your pairings cards and make sure that you notate the opponent number and color for every single card that you have. This will insure that you record correctly the results and don't get confused during round 2.
After recording on your pairing cards the information for opponent and color of each participant, now you post your wall charts and announce that pairings are up, "Please find your boards" etc. Please note, that you place the higher rated players in the quieter locations of the room you are using as far away from the exit signs as possible, to allow for the greatest concentration at the highest levels.
Time controls should have been preannounced, including whether or not you will be allowing Fischer or Bronstein mode clocks (more about that later) and of course, you will need to have pre-published your tie-break system in order to avoid any possible charges of favoritism or corruption (much more about that later). But now, it is time to instruct your players in the way you wish the clocks to face and how to set the hands (analog clocks) or digits (digital clocks).
Let's take a very short look at one or two typical time controls and how to set the analog clock for ease of understanding and viewing by staff and players alike. A very typical 'weekend' tournament time control might be 40/100, G/60 which means, forty moves in one-hundred minutes and Game in sixty sudden death for the second time control. Keep in mind here, that in planning your rounds, you double the total amount of time on each players clock to estimate how long a round will last, and then try to allow at least one hour after the round has expired as a break and a work period for you the TD to come up with the next rounds pairings. So in the case of 40/100 and G/60, six hours between round starts would probably work just fine.
On the analog clocks, I like to have my first time control expire at 6:00 o'clock. This makes seeing the flag fall easy, and in the above listed time control, makes the last time control expire at 7:00 o'clock. So, you would set the initial time on the analog clock to 4:20 o'clock, which would leave one-hundred (100) minutes until the first time control is reached at 6:00 o'clock, and then sixty minutes (60) until the sudden death time control ends the game (one way or the other).
Another typical "weekend" time control might be 40/120, G/60, in this case the only difference between this one and the last example is that you would have the players set their clocks at 4:00 o'clock for the initial time period, with the first time control being reached on each players clock at 6:00 o'clock, second flag falling at 7:00 o'clock. Remember this, in the United States, it is not the responsibility of the arbiter to call the flags. Each of the players bear that responsibility, and no spectator interference should ever be permitted (as in the case of a friend or family member calling the opposing flag).
After you announce all these things, introduce the tournament staff (hopefully you have one or two helpers), and make a few bad jokes, it is time to tell the players to begin. They start their clocks, and you enter the arbitration phase of the TD job (you handle the problems). This will be explained in some detail next issue, regarding what to look for, stylistic nuances and the like.
Tournament Ten deadline for Team Entries will be June 7th, so everyone who wants to participate needs to gets messages to me and Team Captians need to submit their lineups right away. I would anticipate the same basic format for this tournament, as well as all of them through the Summer months.
The Tournament Parameters will be: Time Control 45 45, two sections (U2000 and U1600 Team Average Rating) and 6 rounds regular season (playoffs depend on Team Entries).
<http://www.pond.net/~ckmate/League.html>
"We just had a 9.2 magnitude earthquake which exploded our local volcano during a massive hurricane. I'll not be able to play this week, can I have a bye?"
I have been allowing bye's during the Game Hebdomadal Tournaments (one game per week). From the FIDE Swiss Pairing Rules (1998), if an odd number of players are in a section, the player that does not have a pairing will be given a one point bye. Each player can only receive one of these byes per tournament. If your house is covered with 20 feet of volcanic ash and decide not to play in a certain week, rather than completely withdrawing you, I'll go ahead and give you a half-point bye, only if asked for BEFORE I make the pairings. You will be paired the following week once the 22 inches of rain washes away the pumice.
If you should decide to withdraw from the tournament completely because your ISP fell down a huge crack in the earth's surface, your game results will stand, but all your points will be zeroed. I feel that not finishing a tournament is like not finishing a class at school, you will get no credit. Things come up, I understand, but just like at school, credit is for those that finish. I personally don't require a reason when you notify me, and none is expected when you message me. There is a particularly nasty little subgroup of these withdraws, that is the "silent withdrawal". These are the players who for no good reason decide the TD isn't worth the 8 seconds it takes to message a withdrawal statement. This is considered disruptive and the guilty party may not be allowed to enter any future event. Remember, these are players without good cause for not notifying the TD. "I got tired", "My sister needed the phone line", "I'm not playing well", "My wife just went into labor", "Mom is making me do my homework" or "My last opponent is using a computer" are not acceptable for explaining the "silent withdrawal". The player definitely had 8 seconds to type out the withdrawal notification.
The STC Bunch is using the services of a free web-site, www.FreeServer.com. This service is funded by companies who present advertising on the web pages there. Neither the STC Bunch, the ICC, FICS, any member, nor I endorse these advertisers in any way. If you choose to follow these banner links, do so AT YOUR OWN RISK.
Igor Ivanov, one of the top IM's in the world, is proud to offer you the following online educational special. Online lessons on ICC at the rate of $25.00 per hour, or $90.00 per month (four hours). Please contact IM Ivanov at ivanov@earthlink.net to make all financial arrangements and work out your schedule.
These are the times that more that the normal amount of STC Bunchers will be on the chess servers. This is an informal, come as you are, affair and a good time to schedule some of the games that you arrange with yourselves. This time is for the STC Bunchers to use as they will. If you only have a little time to play, then this is the time to show up.
On ICC: Wednesdays -- 1pm-1am Eastern Standard USA Time
(New York, USA) Time. Or, 6pm-6am GMT (London, England)
On FICS: Thursdays -- 6PM-Midnight Central Standard USA Time
(Chicago, USA) Time. Or, Midnight-6am GMT (London, England)
STC-TD is the account to call on ICC. He has been handling the TD duties there for quite awhile now. On FICS, the tournament is every Sunday at 12:30pm server time in Channel 49 (Mamer). SuperIntellect is the main man there but others may be managing the Mamer bot. Rounds are at 1:15pm, 3:00pm and 4:45pm, (all times are approximations for your convenience, actual starting times may vary on your server) three rounds of Game in 45 with 5 second increment, rated Swiss Tourney. On the ICC, when there are enough players we attempt to run an Open Section, a U1900 section and a U1600 section. If you would like to play 'up' to a higher section, let the TD know and he will accommodate you. Preregistration is not necessary. Just be there or be Round. 'tell 90 (or 49) Who is the TD today?' On the ICC, STC-TD will usually be run by me.
THE STC BUNCH now includes players in:
Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brasil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Panama, Poland, Portugal, Romania, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, UAE, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and the
United States - Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florada, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massechusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington DC, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^|
Copyright © Russ Crawford 2001 ckmate@pond.net Site Map Current Journal May 31st, 2001 |
 |
 |