Round 1 Pairings/Results (U-1300)
(1) Ricky Zhu (990) – Sven Coat (1233) 1/2
(2) Rishi Sarkar (1215) – Isabelle Duanmu (A.R.: 982) 1 – 0
(3) Joshua Lau (967) – Mark Rozin (1114) 1 – 0
(4) Arnav Mane (1090) – Brenton Lin (822) 1 – 0
(5) Joey Lin (800) – Daniel Cloutier (1006) 0 – 1
Forced Bye: Alexander Fedorov (UNR) –> 1pt
Requested Bye:
Alexander Fedyushchenenko (1278) –> 1/2 pt
Haoran Fan (880) –> 1/2 pt
It was on Monday, June 18th, when Hart House Chess Club came into the 2018 Greater Toronto Chess League Cup (GTCL Cup) with a big thirst to win back the prestigious rapid chess award. On top of the big Trophy for the GTCL Cup, two more awards, the Cup for the U-1800 Section and the Plaque for the GTCL League were also eyed by the Club. With hattrick chances, the stakes were high, and the time had come at seven, as the sun set, to deliver.
Hart House was represented by four teams, under the captainship of Alex Ferreira. This strong presence definitely gave our club the necessary manpower to challenge last year’s winners and fight for the precious awards.
Interestingly enough the final round came down to a vicious clash between Hart House A and Hart House Legacy (the alumni team), which were ranked 1st at 2nd at that stage of the competition. The winners would probably be crowned the 2018 GTCL Cup champions.
In the end, Hart House A prevailed with the convincing 3.5 – 0.5 and won the tournament with a perfect score of 5 out of 5. However, in no sense should the results suggest a cruising to victory. Even with two teams stacked with strong players, there was fierce competition all around. Hart House A was, after all, the second seed in the tournament, a few rating points behind the “Chess Stars”.
Perhaps an apt example of the competitiveness of the tournament can be illustrated by the performance of Hart House D, who admirably held their own against players much stronger than themselves and managed to to score a pretty impressive two and a half points, placing themselves in the upper rungs of the U-1800 Section.
Hart House C did even better, finishing the tournament with +1 score (3 out of 5), an extremely admirable performance as reflected by their coming away with the prestigious best under 1800 team award!
The players came away, not only with trophies from this tournament, but also with the Greater Toronto Chess League Championship Plaque. The GTCL Championship is an annual 8-round classical chess tournament, which had been played from January to March. This was an exceptionally strong result, not only because Hart House had defended the championship successfully and thereby becoming back-to-back champions but also because with seven and half points out of eight games, they had not lost a single round.
The victorious team consisted of our amazing alumni and experienced players, Haizhou Xu, Leon Perelman (Team Captain), Kit Ng, Jonathan Yu, Andrei Moffat, Alex Ferreira and Ben Hahn. In the final round, our team had won all 7 matches and only needed one draw against “Covfefe” to claim first place. A very tough battle ensued but, in the end, the match was tied (2-2) and Hart House Chess Club became the sole winner of the 2018 GTCL Championship. The award for the League was presented last Monday, right before the start of the GTCL Cup, serving as the forerunner for the two extra awards, which would be claimed by Hart House by the end of the evening!
For a fourth straight year, the GTCL Cup took place at the hospitable Chess Institute of Canada and was hosted by the Annex Chess Club. Hart House Chess Club would like to thank the organizers and especially, Marcus Walker, Ted Winick and George Supol for joining together to offer the chess community yet another amazing event. Their work in recent years has been truly remarkable. The event brought together players from 20 teams, including two impressive teams of juniors from Markham, representing CCYC!
Finally, we would like to extend our thanks to Michael Barron, the GTCL President, as well Ted Speevak, who put a lot of effort to host the 9-week GTCL League on behalf of the Willowdale Chess Club. Our team had a wonderful time playing in this competition and its organizers deserve a lot of credit for this success!
With 3 out of 3 victories under our belt, it seems like June ends on a high note for Hart House Chess Club. A fantastic achievement which we are looking forward to repeat next year!
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Starting on Friday, May 18th and going until June 15th Hart House Chess Club ran a 4-step workshop for upper-beginner chess players, introducing them to the rudiments of chess tactics, with emphasis on attack and defense. These lessons were taught by Varsity chess player, Panayoti Tsialas, and were mainly addressed to chess enthusiasts who had just learnt the movements of the pieces and wished to step-up their game.
The course lasted for four weeks and took place in the Hart House Reading Room, 5 – 6.15 PM. Students were introduced to two fundamental chess concepts: Attack and Defense. The topic covered included: Attack on the King – Targets of an attack – X-ray attack – Discovered attack / Defense – Defending against check – Defending against attack on a piece / The double attack (with Queen or Knight) / The twofold attack / Defending against a double attack.
Teaching material and ideas were taken mainly from Learning Chess (Step 2), by Rob Brunia and For van Wijgerden, and Chess Camp (Volumes 1-4), by Igor Sukhin. Copies of these books could be found in the Hart House Chess Club lending library.
Panayoti would like to thanks all the students who attended the workshop and contributed their ideas: Dean, Zara, Alex, Giwa, Amar and Vithushan.
We hope that the workshop helped you to improve your game and we are looking forward to seeing you again in our Fall classes and events!
On Friday, June 1st, the Club hosted the much anticipated Hart House Summer Blitz Tournament 2018. The five double round Swiss tournament had demanding 3 +2 time controls, and with twenty participants, this led to some heated play. Emerging from the dust of the struggle Joseph Bellissimo snatched first place. This win for Joe marks another for his trophy cabinet, as he came into the tournament having won the Spring Blitz.
This is not to say that the tournament was smooth sailing for the winner. In a hotly contested tie breaker first seed Nikita Gusev seemed as though he may push forward to win. However, as pressure from the clock mounted, a few mistakes gave way to a clear losing position, giving Nikita a very respectable second place.
In terms of aggressive tie breakers, the third place tie breakers would be hard to match, as four players of considerable strength faced off against one another.
Juliaan Posaratnanathan would emerge the winner but was given considerable difficulty by Ranmal Bandara, the deceptive Edward Chan, and Haizhou Xu, who has the apt nickname “Zeus”.
Though Ranmal may not have come third, he did win best under 1600 player. A well deserved prize for an excellent performance.
It must be said that under the cool shade of the trees with green grass gleaming it made for a memorable occasion, even for those who did not come away with a prize.
We must give a special thank you to Hart House, and specifically to its staging staff, who went beyond the call of duty in helping us to carry outside the heavy fold-up tables. We are also very grateful to Sahan Karunaratne and Vithushan Surendran, who lent us a very generous hand of support in setting up the stage for the tournament.
An additional note of thanks must be given to Panayoti Tsialas, the chief organizer of the tournament, whose preparation allowed the tournament to run like clockwork.
Finally, we were stunned by Stephanie Chen’s unique eye for photography and we would like to thank her for the amazing close-ups she snapped!
We would also like to extend a big thank you to all the participants and congratulate the winners. We sincerely hope to see you all again, especially in competitive play!
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2018 Hart House Summer Junior Open
Standings
I. Under 1300
After Round 1
After Round 2
After Round 3
After Round 4
Final Standings
II. Under 800
After Round 1
After Round 2
After Round 3
After Round 4
Final Standings
Under 1300
Alexander Fedyushchenenko (1278)
Sven Coat (1233)
Rishi Sarkar (1215)
Mark Rozin (1114)
Arnav Mane (1090)
Daniel Cloutier (1006)
Ricky Zhu (990)
Isabelle Duanmu (A.R.: 982)
Joshua Lau (967)
Haoran Fan (880)
Brenton Lin (822)
Joey Lin (800)
Alexander Fedorov (UNR)
Under 800
Owen Lee (A.R.: 788)
Isaac Duanmu (A.R.: 776)
Ricky Chen (760)
Justin Huang (756)
Ivan Huang (696)
Guanming Yu (671)
Jerry Zhijun Zhang (634)
Raymond Cheng (A.R.: 623)
Eric Fan (538)
Gordon Zeng (519)
Marie Guan (485)
Jeremy Zhu (465)
Jeffrey Zhuang (323)
Isabella Yang (229)
Shuhan Zhang (228)
Carina Feng (200)
Carina D’Souza (UNR)
Dean Toyserkani (UNR)
Note: To encourage the young participants to reflect on their games and improve their play our club has decided to offer free chess analysis to all players who want to review their games and discover ways of getting better. Our team of chess analysts will consist of the following UofT students/alumni:
Analysis will take place in a separate room and we’ll try to make sure that at least two coaches are in the analysis room during each round.
Finally, for parents who are interested in watching the World Cup while waiting for their kids to finish their games, a big screen with a projector, loud speakers and couches will be set up in a spacious room on Saturday morning and afternoon providing a comfortable space for watching soccer!
Back in the 2000s a volunteers’ Charity Organization called Ashanti Development was founded in London with the aim of providing help to improve the lives of the people in their home villages in Ghana. Ashanti is the largest and statistically richest region in Ghana. But few local people benefit from these natural resources, and those that the Organization works with are among the poorest ones. Since 2006, Ashanti Development has brought the local villages clean water and sanitation, training in health and hygiene, healthcare, help with education and income generation, libraries, computer centres and more besides!
This past May, our club’s coach, Jonathan Yu, along with Hart House Chess Club’s former Secretary, Bill Kim, joined the team of volunteers, who went to Ghana! The larger mission was to contribute money for sanitation and for maintaining pipelines but John’s and Bill’s more specific task was to build a science curriculum for the local High School! This included (among other things) setting-up educational microscopes and providing training to the local teachers as to how they should use the equipment and what methods they can use to promote education!
On the side of their main mission, however, Jon and Bill had decided that they would attempt to create a small chess club for the juniors of the village! This was, after all, part of their more general effort to enrich education! And so they did!
Every day, the kids would anxiously await for the after school hours when they could practice their new favorite game! You see, Jon and Bill lived right across the street of the junior high school! Thus, every afternoon, right after school, a group of 10-20 smiling kids would cross the main street to join Jon and Bill! Then the chess games would begin and, along with them, came the joy of learning something new! Some kids really fell in love with chess. Others preferred to use the chess boards to play checkers. Still others enjoyed the experience of hanging out with their friends over black-and-white squares, occupied by imaginary, harmless armies.
No matter what attracted each of them, they all had one thing in common! They knew how to flash a disarming smile to the camera!
As Hart House Chess Club, we are very happy to have donated three of our boards and chess sets to promote chess in the villages of Ashanti. We are even more grateful to Jon and Bill for volunteering their time to serve such a meaningful educational goal. The largest part of our gratitude, however, is owed to the Ghanian kids themselves. It is them who inspired us and taught us a lesson no-one else could.
Hart House Chess Club 