Tag: Upcoming Events

Hart House Chess Club hosted its Spring Junior Open tournament from March 16th to March 17th, 2019. It was the second junior chess event organized by our club in two consecutive years and what a blast it was! Held in the elegant Debates Room with the arched ceiling, the event attracted 22 young participants who showed everyone their confidence and chess skills during the March break.

Divided into two rating sections, an U- 900 and an U-1300 section, with 11 players each, the tournament offered 5 rounds of classical chess (55′ + 5”/move) in swiss-system. The competition was remarkably intense, as can be demonstrated by the ties for the top 3 in each section.

In the upper section especially, with one round to go, there was a long list of players from which the winner could have come out! Joshua Lau and Mark Rozin were leading with 3 out of 4 points but Yinan Wang, Ivan Huang and Zi Liu were a hair’s breath away from the top with 2.5 points in 4 games.

In the last-round games, Ivan Huang managed to beat Mark Rozin, Zi Liu lost to Joshua Lau and Yinan Wang defeated Justin Huang.

This meant that Joshua Lau was sole first with 4/5, followed by Ivan Huang and Yinan Wang with 3.5/5 each. As the latter two had drawn their head-to-head game, the second tie-breaking criterion (opponent’s average rating) was decisive with Ivan Huang emerging on second place and the silver medal position! Lily Liu was also in a medal-winning position as she was the top girl in her section!

It’s also worth mentioning that the last round saw the best game of the U-1300, a spectacular victory by Sven Coat against Varun Pillai in the venomous Italian. After sacrificing two pawns Sven gained enough time in the opening to launch an unstoppable attack against his opponent’s king, checkmating him in the middle of the board.

In the U-900 section things looked a bit clearer at the top level. Nora Wu entered the last round with 4 out of 4, threatened only by Karma Pillai and Yiming Zhao who had 3 out of 4 each. Gordon Zeng and Charis Zhu were also fighting for medals, with 2.5 points each.

After a double-edged game with opportunities for both sides, Nora Wu managed to win her game against Karma Pillai, scoring a perfect 5 out of 5 score and clinching the gold medal position! Charis Zhu and Gordon Zeng also won their games against Yiming Zhao and William Johnson, respectively, so they tied for second place with 3.5 points out of 5. Curiously enough, in a mirror image of the upper section, Charis and Gordon had drawn their head-to-head game so the second tie-breaking criterion had to be used, which placed Charis Zhu second and Gordon Zeng third. As for the top-female player distinction, the shiny medal was awarded to the very resilient Katelyn Johnson.

As for the best game of the U-900 section, Jasper He and Charis Zhu must be very proud of their battle on Round 4. Their moves led to a slow and extremely positional game with opposite castles, where each side was fighting for the control of the center and the fast pawn expansion on the wing where the opposite king was. You don’t often see great strategic games like this between younger players.

The event organizers were delighted to introduce for the first time 11 beautiful digital boards in the competition, allowing the spectators to watch all the games live on-line! But March madness did not end with the live broadcasting of the games! With five national masters analyzing the games with the kids after each round, the excitement that swirled around the skittles room added even more to the enthusiasm of the day! A nice buffet of snacks and coffee was provided to the kids and the parents and a bulletin with the games of the tournament was sent out to all the participants for further review and analysis!

Of course, none of this could have happened without the very generous support of the UofT students, who volunteered a lot of their time and energy to boost the event. Weiwen Leung and Alex Ferreira were the event arbiters and did an excellent job running the pairings and providing the results, standings and tie-breaking criteria. The latter also took on the difficult task of the on-line registrations. Jimmy Bartha deserves some really high praise as he served as digital board operator in this first exciting trial! He was also the person who, with the aid of Sean Lei, Dmitry Choukov, Andrew MacMillan and Panayoti Tsialas, set-up the cables and the boards in the playing hall. Alyssa Rusonik, the incoming Communications Director of the club, was, once again, very efficient and exquisite in the handling of the on-site payments. Her ability to demonstrate leadership skills in every task she undertakes is outstanding.

The club incurred a huge debt to Zara Toyserkani, who was at the skittles room from the very first till the very last minute of the tournament, taking care of the buffet and making sure that the parents and the kids would have a great time throughout their time at Hart House. Of course a big shout-out goes out to National Masters Sean Lei, Tanner McNamara, Jonathan Yu and Zane Nasir and to ex-Varsity player Gary Huang, who labored really hard in the skittles room, analyzing the games of the kids, providing helpful chess instruction and encouraging them to improve game by game! The combination UofT students analyzing chess games with the kids in the skittles room was and remains the most popular feature of our junior tournaments! The award ceremony was led by the very talented incoming club treasurer Sean Lei, who was delighted to congratulate the winners in each section! Finally, the tournament was directed by Panayoti Tsialas, whom the club would also like to thank for making the photo gallery and the bulletin of the games.

It’s been a great pleasure for our club to organize its second Junior Tournament in two years. We are grateful to Hart House for providing us with all the assistance we need to run the event and, more than anyone else, we wish to thank all the participants and their parents for taking part in our tournament and supporting the official chess club of the students of UofT.

Click on the links below to view:

• The Participants List
• The Pairings & Results per round
• The Final Standings
• The Photo Gallery of the event
• The Bulletin of the Games

See you all in our next event! Until then, practice, play analyze, repeat!

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“When witches go riding, and zombies are seen, the moon laughs and whispers, a checkmate is near.”

It might be that there were no buckets of blood or bat wings, snakes and eyeballs in the Hart House Reading Room but there sure was plenty of gore and terror on the chess boards. On Friday, October 26th Hart House Chess Club hosted its first ever themed blitz tournament, asking participants to play the notorious Halloween Gambit (1.e4 e5, 2. Nf3 Nc6, 3. Nc3 Nf6, 4. Nxe5). What a better way to spend your Halloween?

Twenty-eight players accepted the invitation and came out to play – among them, three chess masters. And boy-oh-boy! What a terrific spectacle they offered! This slimy and forgotten line resulted in 95% decisive results, with just a handful of games ending with draw. The big shocker, however, was that, while before the tournament almost everyone was quick to dismiss the gambit as hopeless, it turned out that many players were able to discover hidden resources in White’s position and push their initiative into a full point! Even Μasters who thought that White is simply left a piece down on move four had a really hard time defending Black’s position in a Blitz Game, absent any home preparation.

Moreover, and in the spirit of  preparing our less experienced club members to challenge the top seeds of the tournament, our very own exec and chess master, Zane Nasir, taught an intensive one-hour workshop on the Halloween Gambit Tournament right before the games. Attendees were taught the fundamentals of this opening and were introduced to some notorious Halloween traps they should avoid!

The tournament was a 5 double-round Swiss system with each player taking a shot at the Halloween Gambit, first as White and then as Black. Each player had 3 min + 2 secs per move to complete the game. And while there were no major upsets in the tournament, there was a lot of suspense in the end with two top seeds facing each other in the last round. William Li, coming from 8 straight victories  in the first 8 games was facing Hart House Chess Club’s Varsity Player James Fu, who had 7 points. James repelled William’s attack and won the first game with Black and the question was: would he be able claim first place by beating his opponent with the Halloween Gambit?

In a tournament-deciding game, the Gambit showed its sharp teeth and its bite proved venomous. James defeated William after a tough fight and, with 9 points out of 10 games, he claimed first place in the Hart House Halloween Blitz Tourney!

James Fu and Mr. Gerhard Gross, who was visiting from Germany, were, in fact, the only players who did not lose a single match in the tournament.

But the games were not over yet as, after 10 rounds, Ethan Moon and Jurgen Aliaj both had scored 7/10, tying for the U-1600 prize.

In the playoffs that followed,  in a mirror image of the match between James and William, Ethan first took the Black pieces and managed to stop Jurgen’s attack. In the second game, however, his own halloween attack proved too powerful and led to a back rank checkmate, offering Ethan the U-1600 prize.

Finally, after a sudden hiccup on Round 2, Eileen Lin scored a magnificent 7 points in 10 games and became the rightful winner of the top female player prize!

Panayoti Tsialas was the tournament arbiter. Given the special occasion, all participants were treated to Halloween candy! Hart House Chess Club would like to thank all our chess friends who came out to play with special thanks to the very promising 15 year-old Brendan Cambell who travelled with his mom all the way from Michigan and participated in the event! Finally, a big shout-out to Dmitri Chouchkov, Zara Toyserkani, Robin and so many other unnamed volunteers who added their generous contribution to the success of this event.

If anything, the Halloween Blitz Tournament proved that, in the modern chess era, when engines are assuming an all the more prominent role in the game, there are still ways to stay creative. Themed tournament that revive sharp and forgotten lines are but one way to uphold chess imagination, a precious quality not in great supply. To bring it back to Halloween and to quote a famous author: “Where there is no imagination there is no horror”.