2025 Duck Chess Champion Crowned - New Format Here - And Chess Quotes

 

This chart is a little old since it was calculated before our new world champion, India's Gukesh Dommaraju was crowned.  But it is where the chess computers ranked the other world champions by chess accuracy.

The shock placements to me are how high Kramnik, Tal and Botvinnik are. I personally would have thought to place Kramnik below Capablanca, Tal below Euwe and Botvinnik below Morphy. But data talks, and opinions can just take a walk!

Hello Chess Fans from all over the world! And, yes we do get readers from all over the world. And the Club thanks each and every one of you!

Your humble scribe is changing the format here. The customary Club information will now be displayed at the end of the article. It finally dawned on your not so smart scribe that readers looking ONLY on their phones may only see the same “beginning” every time and not know the content has changed!

It's a phone world now. Not a tablet, laptop or desktop world anymore. So, hence the change.

With that acknowledgement out of the way, congratulations to LCCC’s first Duck Chess Champion, Pete Bruder! He bested a field of fourteen players with a perfect 3-0 score.

Our next free club tournament will be the 960 Fischer Random Championship starting in early June. Probably the first Monday after Memorial Day. Hope to see a good turnout for that fun event!

Now for some chess quotes as people try to define the best game in the world;

Chess is an earnest exercise of the mind. – Thomas Cogan

Chess, like love, is infectious at any age. – Salo Flohr

Chess is a beautiful mistress. – Bent Larsen

Chess is a very sexy game. – Sally Beauman

But chess also has it’s detractors!

Chess is one long regret! – Stephen Leacock

Chess is a sad waste of brains! – Sir Walter Scott

Chess is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever. – George Bernard Shaw

Your humble scribe believes that all seven people are all correct!

The Livingston County Chess Club meets every Monday night between

4pm and 10pm

at the Buffalo Wild Wings in the Green Oak Mall in Brighton, MI. 

Stop in for some friendly chess, good food and 'refreshments'.

Everyone of all ages and playing strength are welcome to attend. And free lessons to all beginners!

Duck Chess Tournament April 7th, 2025 and a Warning to Never Blindly Follow Grandmasters!

The Livingston County Chess Club meets every Monday night between 

4pm and 10pm 

at the Buffalo Wild Wings in the Green Oak Mall in Brighton, MI. 

Stop in for some friendly chess, good food and 'refreshments'. 

Everyone of all ages and playing strength are welcome to attend. And free lessons to all beginners!

A reminder that next week our 1st Annual Duck Chess Tournament will begin. Be there by 6pm or so to sign up for FREE! The time limit for the tournament will be 45 minutes for each player with a 5 second delay. The tournament round will begin around 6:30 pm.

For those of you not familiar with Duck Chess, the rules can be found on-line. It is a variant of chess where after a player moves, he must also move “the duck” to any un-occupied square on the board. And the Duck Chess Rules will be available for all participants the night of the tournament, so no worries there.

The tournament will go 1 round per week for 3 rounds or maybe 4, so keep that in mind when signing up. Playing in every round of the tournament gets you an entry into our drawing for that beautiful wood chess set valued at over $150!

Now for a little lesson for all chess players, but especially for all you “advanced beginners”.

What is an Advanced Beginner you might ask? Well, your humble scribe defines one as a player that knows how the pieces move and knows the basic strategies of ‘developing your pieces’, ‘protecting the king by castling’ and ‘controlling the center.’

What normally happens at this point is the player wants to learn some “openings” that he hears veteran players talk about that are played. Thais an 'advanced beginner.'

While it is a good idea to learn some openings, you don’t want to just memorize them. You need to know the reason and/or strategy behind the moves. If you don’t do that, you can walk yourself into bad situations.

As an illustration, I first need to explain what a book called the Chess Informant is. 

It is a book series that captures almost all of the games played in major tournaments since the last issue was published. It used to be the bible for all Grandmasters as they poured over the games of their future opponents, and to see if there were any new opening theory nuggets to be tried.

Well in 1987, this game was played and placed in the Informant book; GM Miles – GM Christensen, San Franscisco Open:

1.  e4 , e5   2. Nf3 , Nf6   3. Nxe5 , d6   4. Nf3 , Nxe4   5. Nc3 , Bf5 – (see diagram) with the Informant giving Black’s last move as an (N) for Novelty! The game went on for another 15 lazy moves before the players agreed to a draw.

What was not mentioned in the book (and how would they know anyway?) was that Miles and Christensen had agreed to a draw before the round started.

Well, the young future world junior champion - and future World Champion, - GM Viswanathan Anand did not know that either! And computers were not used to analyze positions yet before publishing, as computers were not yet as good as the best players at that time.

So, without checking, Anand played this opening with Black against GM Alonso Zapata in Beil, 1988 -  to hopefully surprise and scare his opponent with this ‘Novelty’. 

Well Zapata played 6. Qe2 in less than a minute!

Anand instantly saw that 6. ….Qe7 loses to 7. Nd5 and that 6. …d5 loses to 7. d3. So, the future chess world champion, Anand, resigned on the spot!

History was made. This gave the world the shortest loss ever by a GM in a tournament game!

So even the best, have lost by not knowing why certain opening moves are played. The moral is to learn and not memorize.