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We are thrilled to share with you an opportunity to attend an international chess competition hosted by the Hart House Chess Club. The 2nd Ivy League Chess Challenge is to be held 8-10 November 2019 at the Hart House Building.

Our beloved club will take on four reputable U.S. Universities of the North East (Michigan, Harvard, Yale and Princeton) and we are looking for eight players to represent University of Toronto in this team competition! Each of the 5 rounds will be played with 90′ + 30″ time control and the games will be FIDE rated. All current UofT students who purchase an annual HHCC membership for the 2019-2020 academic year will be eligible to participate in the tournament for a discounted entry fee of $30 per player.

If this is an event that interests you, we encourage you to please let us know by sending an email to hhchess@utoronto.ca by no later than Friday, September 20th, 10 pm. In your e-mail please include:

– Your CFC/FIDE/other rating.
– The level of your commitment for the three days of the tournament.

The selections will be made over the weekend based on these two selection criteria and announced on Monday, September 23rd.

This is a fantastic opportunity to represent UofT and we hope you will consider joining our team! Of course, should you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to let us know.

We look forward to hearing back from you soon!

HHCC is pleased to announce that FM and IA Stephen Boyd will be hosting a lecture in the evening of October 4th. Over the course of the talk, he will discuss some games from the Pan American Intercollegiate Chess Championship Tournaments where he participated in the 70’s. He will also talk about his experiences at the Hart House Chess Club and share some anecdotes about his life in chess.  We hope you will join us to hear Mr. Boyd comment on the evolution and history of our beloved chess club, offer some spectacular game analysis, and lead a Q&A session.

Event details
Date: 4 October 2019
Location: Hart House Debates Room
Time: 7:30 – 9:00 pm
This event is free for Hart House Chess Club members to attend; we hope to see you there! 

About the Speaker
Stephen Boyd started playing chess seriously at the age of 15. He passed his last high school and university years playing chess. He is well-known as an organiser, arbiter and committee member in Canada. He played on two Pan-Am Championship teams in 1973 and 1974. He became an International Arbiter in 1987 and FIDE Master in 1993. In 1991 he left Canada to live in France and he became a full-time chess professional as a technical person, teacher, trainer, arbiter and organiser. Every year he is one of the principal arbiters at the Gibraltar Chess Festival.

Stephen is also a French/Canadian International Arbiter (1989), FIDE Master (1993), ICCF IM (2009). He studied Philosophy and Mathematics at the University of Toronto and also studied printing. He worked as a typographer during the 1980-90s. He started directing tournaments at the age of 16 during the Fischer boom and was on the staff of Chess Canada. An active organizer in Canada until 1991 he then moved to France. He co-founded the Club d’Echecs International de Toulouse and later worked for the French Chess Federation. He was the rating officer of the French Chess Federation from 2005-2010. He is presently a member of the FIDE arbiters’ commission. He is also involved in the training of arbiters and chess teachers.

He was chief arbiter of the World Youth Championship (1997, Cannes), the World Cup of Rapid Chess (1998, Cap d’Agde and 2001, Cannes) and the European Blitz Championship (2006, Cannes). He regularly directs Open tournaments in the south of France (St. Affrique, Cannes, Toulouse, Cap d’Agde and Montpellier). Over-the-board, he represented Canada in the student Olympiads in Mexico City in 1980 and France in the Mitropa Cup in 1999 in Baden, Switzerland. In postal chess, he was two-time Canadian Champion and was 2nd in the North American Championship of 1989-1992 (World Chpt. ¼ final).

On Tuesday, September 3rd, club Secretary/president Elly Chen and Treasurer Sean Lei conducted a workshop at Woodsworth College for incoming first-year students. The room was packed! You can read Elly’s report on the successful event below.

“From Chess to Success” workshop is an initiative proposed by Hart House Chess Club (HHCC) and warmed welcomed by the Co-Coordinator Andrew Fernandes of the orientation at Woodsworth College. It is an initiative of HHCC that intends to provide knowledge of on-campus resources as well as transferable skills from playing chess to university life and beyond for the first year students. Although Woodsworth College is the largest college within the faculty of Arts and Science at the University of Toronto, St. George campus, it is the first time for them to collaborate with Hart House, and specifically HHCC, to bring out this wonderful event.

HHCC is the home to many chess enthusiasts, including both students and community members. Members and visitors may come from different background, but many of them embrace the same ideology that, like Bobby Fischer said, “Chess is life”. Indeed, many skills learnt in chess can help greatly with a person’s life as well as academics. HHCC Event Coordinator Tanner McNamara had shared with the executives prior to the workshop that playing chess has allowed him to believe in himself, face failures and become patient to improve. It was so inspiring that HHCC secretary/president Elly Chen had included this story of his to share with the Woodsworth students during the workshop in hopes of assisting first year students to better prepare for their university life.

Other than Sean and Elly, HHCC had also invited Adam Devine-Turriff from RBC On-campus Outreach as a special guest to present to students about how playing chess has helped with his professional life as a digital banking advisor. Even with short notice, Elly and Adam decided to focus on the holistic wellness for students in line with what Hart House focuses, and therefore, Adam and his team were able to provide extensive information on on-campus resources other than what Elly had covered about Hart House UTSU, and Sean about Woodsworth College.

The workshop had run for about 90 minutes, and consisted of 3 main parts with a touch of human chess game in the end. None of the speakers had a chance to rehearse beforehand due to the aforementioned communication problem, but everyone managed to bring their best for students. Indeed, before the workshop, Andrew had kindly dropped by to say hi, and even brought snacks of chips and crackers for the workshop; and the Vice-President of WCSA Social Affairs Joyce Fung had generously assisted the workshop by presenting on the WCSA resources as well as providing printing materials. The attendance was also exciting. As first told by Joyce, HHCC should expect about only 20 students. However, more than 30 students showed up, and some of them had to stand for the first half of the session before more chairs were supplied.

Everyone who entered the room was warmly greeted by HHCC and asked to take a random piece from the chess set without looking to prepare for the human chess game in the end. Adam and his team had assisted the process by generously providing Kind bars to students as well. After the first part of the workshop conducted by Sean on what resources Woodsworth has to offer, Elly introduced other wonderful on-campus resources for students to allow them to understand why it’s important to get involved, how they can get involved and what are the things that they can get involved such as Hart House and UTSU clubs. Adam and his colleague Kai followed up to provide even more information to encourage students take care of their wellness. Finally, all students were asked to group themselves as black and white, and played a human chess game based on the number of moves that match the number of players on each side to foster an understanding of how important organizational skills, time management skills and problem solving skills are in university and beyond. 16 feedback sheets were collected in the end, and 14/16 rated this session as the highest score possible on the Likert scale.

Our first official meeting of the year is coming up next week — and, as always, we’ll be hosting a pizza party! We hope you will join us on Friday, September 13th, 6-8pm in the Hart House Reading Room as we celebrate the start of another chess-filled year.

This is a wonderful opportunity to see your old chess friends and to meet new ones. We’ll also be sharing lots of exciting news and would love to answer any questions you might have about HHCC, so please do come by!

Sahan Karunaratne
Current CFC rating: 1495

Sahan has employed a vast number of strategies when teaching chess in the past as the president of his high school chess club. Some, such as exhaustively and exclusively reviewing an extremely complicated game, proved not to be beneficial or enjoyable. Others, such as starting off with the examination of simple positions and then turning to differing positions with the same underlying ideas but with increasing complexity have met with great success.

In particular, Sahan has discovered this use of puzzles to be an effective tool to train one of the skills most crucial to chess improvement: pattern recognition. In his lessons, he hopes to preserve the same joy that comes from playing chess, which, unfortunately, is often missing in chess instruction. Thus, he likes to place as much emphasis on solving puzzles as is reasonable, and he especially enjoys displaying beautiful games of chess.

Sahan would also like to add that he would not have been an active member of the Hart House Chess Club if it had not been for Panayioti Tsialas, who was an executive at the time. He constantly encouraged Sahan to take part in chess club events, participate in tournaments and spent a considerable amount of time when giving me thorough advice on how to improve his game. Sahan hopes to be able to replicate at least some of what Panayoti was able to do for his experience at the Hart House Chess Club in his capacity as a coach.

In addition to being a dedicated coach, Sahan has also been generously volunteering his time since the very start of the Covid lockdown to organize a wealth of online events including weekly blitz, bullet and rapid tournaments. Thanks to his tireless efforts, HHCC Online has been a tremendous success and club members have had the opportunity to gather and meet over the chessboard as often as before!

Chess Bio
– Events Coordinator at HHCC 2018-19
– 2nd year studying for an Applied Mathematics with Statistics Specialist
– Learnt chess at the age of 5
– Began playing rated tournaments after joining the Hart House Chess Club

Chess Club is delighted to be a part of Hart House’s Explore Barbecue again this year.

Join us on September 12th from 12 to 2pm for a fun chess-themed activity, a blitz game, and free food generously provided by Hart House. This is a great opportunity to engage with some of the highlights of student life at Hart House, and we hope to see you there!

Hart House Chess Club was delighted to participate in the UTSU Clubs Festival on September 4th — we were thrilled to see a large number of new and returning chess friends! You can read Elly Chen’s report on the event below:

Alongside Hart House’s 100th year anniversary, HHCC is proud to share some wonderful events and services offered by the chess club at the UTSU Club Fair on Sep 4. Located within the family circle of Hart House on the front campus next to the academic student unions, HHCC drew attention from many students and even some from the neighboring Archery Club!

UTSU Club Fair is a once-a-year event usually hosted during frosh week before school starts. It gives perspective and current students a great opportunity to learn more about the on-campus resources as well as student clubs. This year, HHCC not only has 2 representatives from the executive team, Elly and Sean, but also a dedicated member Joseph Bellissimo who shared his valuable experience with interested students.

During the 3-hour slot, more than 140 students indicated interests in joining HHCC, and many showed great interests in the beginner lessons for absolute beginners. Sean and Joseph had pleasure meeting an International Master while Elly had been sharing her experience with students outside the booth. This event is not possible without the valuable contribution Director of Communications and Fundraiser Panayoti Tsialas and Director of Communications Alyssa Rusonik.

HHCC meets every Friday 4 – 11 p.m. in the Reading Room in Hart House. We welcome all students and community members from all chess skill levels, and we’re excited to share yet another exciting year with everyone. A welcome party will be held on Sep 13 starting at 6 pm, and we look forward to seeing all of you who are reading this post!

With very fond childhood memories of playing the game, Alyssa is thrilled to be returning to the world of chess in her capacity as President/Secretary where she hopes her past experiences coordinating Debate Tournaments will be of service to the club. Alyssa has been the Tournament Director of a number of events, each of which brought together over 200 competitors from across the province. Apart from chess and debating, her hobbies include the study of political and art history, and literature; she also enjoys playing tennis and piano, and skating.

Alyssa is a third-year student and UofT National Scholar pursuing a joint degree in economics and mathematics, along with a minor in history. She had the honour of serving as HHCC’s Director of Communications in 2019-20 and is delighted to again be a part of the Hart House Chess Club this year!