Corner Chess
Tournament

Tournament News & Notices:

NOTE: The games in this tournament are being played in the game site called "It's Your Turn". To learn more about how to play chess in that site, just click on the little bird here:

12/26/02: Today, on CNN they interviewed author Pat Conroy about his latest book My Losing Season. The author's main idea is that losing is sometimes good for us & that we learn more about life by losing than winning. Gee, if that is true, then it looks to me as though Blind-Fury is being a good teacher for us in this tournament and I'm getting very smart lately & didn't even know it. :>)

12/10/02: Friends, meet Caissa, the goddess of chess. Due to an inspiring chat with Martin L. today, I've learned a lot about the concept of Caissa. In the upper right corner I show a painting of her I found on the web (painter not given). To learn more about this interesting topic, click HERE

12/8/02: Please scroll to near the bottom of the page, to see the start of a new feature: Player information.

12/7/02: I'm pleased to announce that position #5 is filled now. It's Tony Gardner (from Conyers, GA). Please challenge him if the chart indicates that for you. Otherwise, please await his challenge to you. Welcome, Tony.

12/4/02: Special note to all -- Please set your profiles so that games in progress and recently completed games can be viewed. (Incidentally, this is a general rule for official IYT tournaments anyway. So it is only logical for us to do likewise.) This will help me provide a better, more efficient management of this tournament for all to enjoy. Thanking you in advance for your consideration.

12/2/02: We now have a new player #8. His full name is "Michaelangelo Leonardo Domenicostheotocopolos". However, in the interest of limited space in the table below, I will shorten it there to just "Michaelangelo". The 4 persons who need to challenge him can use the copy/paste function to find him in the data base. If anyone has any troubles, just let me know. Welcome aboard, Michaelangelo!

--Terry

CK1 Tournament
Nov. 25, 2002

     Welcome to all of those who have entered. This event will be a simple one-round affair, a round robin, where each player meets every other in one game. As there are 9 entrants, there will be 8 games, four with white and four with black.

     Refer to the chart below, and issue a one-game challenge of King's Corner chess to each of the four players whose numbers are indicated to the right of your name with the letter "b". (This will give you the black pieces.)

     Set the time control at 7 days. Generally though, most moves should be made much quicker. If you have a trip or vacation that you can anticipate in advance, let your opponents know and the time limit can be adjusted accordingly.

     When all this has been accomplished, every player will have 8 games in progress. Please let me know if you have trouble contacting anyone.

     Send results (wins) to me as soon as possible and I will post them in the crosstable. The white player reports a draw. Best of luck to the competitors!!

-- Terry     ( emmail link is down below )

CK1 Tournament
No.
NAME
#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 W L D SCORE
1
Black Knight .
L
W
W
L
W
L
W
L
4
4
.
20f
2
Blind-Fury
W
.
W
L
W
W
W
L
W
6
2
.
26f
3
Dent Man
L
L
.
L
gp
L
L
gp
D
.
5
1
7
4
HAJBEKO YOSSI
L
W
W
.
L
L
L
W
W
4
4 .
20f
5
Tony Gardner
W
L
gp
W
.
W
W
W
W
6
1
.
25
6
Martin L.
L
L
W
W
L
.
W
L
W
4
4
.
20f
7
spocko
W
L
W
W
L
L
.
L
L
3
5
.
17f
8
Michaelangelo
0
W
gp
0
0
W
W
.
W
4
2 .
16
9
Terry
W
L
D
L
L
L
W
L
.
2
5
1
15f

Symbol
Meaning
b
Player named on left still has to challenge one numbered above
.
Player named on left waiting to be challenged by one numbered above
gp
Game is currently in progress
W
Game won; worth 4 points
L
Game lost; worth 1 point
D
Game drawn; worth 2 points
0
Game Timed-out; worth 0 points

Scoring System

This will be the scoring system for this tournament:

  • A win (W) earns 4 points.
  • A draw (D) earns 2 points.
  • A loss (L) earns 1 point.
  • 0 points will be given to anyone who quits a game without officially resigning.

     This is being done for 2 reasons, basically. One is to promote fighting chess & discourage needless draws. Under this system in 2 games a win and a loss earns 5 points, whereas two draws earns only 4 points. So it's more important to take a few risks; but it's still a personal decision.

     Two is to encourage players not to merely abandon a hopeless game, taking the loss via the "expiration of the time limit" rule used in these chess sites, without informing their opponents directly. Therefore, think of it as a little reward for being courteous to others.

     (I have used this system before; it works.)

          -- Terry    (trottermath@gmail.com)

Player information

Here I will present some information about the persons in our tournament, so that we can get to know the "real person behind the userid". (If you wish to share your own personal facts, just let me know. Nothing will be shown here without your permission.) I will begin with myself.

     My name is Terrel (Terry) Trotter, aka "kaprekar" [IYT userid]. I'm 61 yrs old & live in San Salvador, El Salvador. I'm a retired school teacher, field of mathematics. My website, "The World of Trotter Math", can be accessed by clicking the "Home Page" link at the bottom of this page.
     I'm married to a lovely Salvadorean woman, Gloria; we have 4 children (ages 34, 33, 31, & 19).
     (more later)


Spocko

Spocko sent the following email to me:

Hi my name is Rick Valdron. I am 42 and by my userid you can tell that I am a trekkie. Spocko came from an episode in the original series. I like science-fiction and science-fantasy a lot, along with war games and strategy games. I have worked in industial roofing for the last 19 years. I live in London, Ontario, Canada. I am divorced and have 12 and almost 13 year old daughter and 16 year old step-son. I am a hardy Canadien. My daughter and I are clan of the wolf. hope to get pic to you soon


Tony Gardner

In his own words:

You already know my name and place of residence from my profile, and that I am a tenacious board game addict, so here is some more personal detail:

I was born on April 6, 1954 in Dayton, Ohio; grew up in Dayton, Cincinnati and Springfield. After high school, three years in Uncle Sam's Army, and two years of trade school I decided that the harsh northern winters really didn't fit into my desired comfort zone, and I've been living in or near Atlanta ever since.

I'm a trained and experienced accountant, good with details, figures and special projects; had various jobs, but never got along well with employers or bosses. For the past ten years I have fared much better as a househusband! Kathy (my darling wife of 16 years) is employed as an AS400 manager for a large conglomerate; her co-workers call her "the system sheriff".

As far back as I can remember, I've always loved playing board games of the mentally stimulating variety. Chess, Feudal, Twixt, Stratego, Scrabble, and Tri-Ominos are among my old favorites. At some point I began exploring the expansive world of chess variants, and in 1987 I was introduced to one particularly fascinating concept that would forever change my perception of all games and even of life itself! It is known as English Progressive Chess (ENPR, for short). There are in fact numerous progressive chesses, most of them characterized by wild, uncontrolled kamikaze play, but "English" adds movement rules which considerably refine the concept, making it more "chess-like", one might say.

For years, I played ENPR in an Italian club which has since sadly faded away. My record is +164 -11, and I'm generally regarded as the strongest player in the world, although the known field is only about 50 players. In 1995, I wrote a short treatise (18 pages) on ENPR, of which one prominent game reviewer stated, "a brief, yet authoritative and comprehensive survey of the game". Plenty of information on ENPR is available to anyone interested, and someday I hope to put together an e-mail club to play it. Nothing could match my zeal for this game, although there are several other chess variants I have played and enjoyed.

I am very glad to be part of the CK1 tournament, and looking forward to some interesting and intense battles, especially with some of my old fortress chess rivals!


Black Knight

Here's the story:

Hello, my name is Malcolm and I am 52. I have worked as a Senior Biomedical Scientist in Laboratory Medicine at a very busy hospital in the centre of UK for about 33 years. I have a lovely wife and three children.

My hobbies include chess in all forms and variations, problem solving, digital photography, web site publishing, crown green bowling and dancing.

My nickname on IYT is Black Knight, which has nothing to do with the evil one. I am suffering from retinitis pigmentosa (RP), which is the name given to a group of disorders of the Retina, all of which result in a progressive reduction in vision. The Retina is the light sensitive tissue inside the eye in which the first stages of seeing take place. In RP disorders, various parts of the Retina cease to function. The symptoms of this group of disorders usually become apparent between the ages of 10 and 30, although some changes may become apparent in childhood. By contrast, some types of RP may only show symptoms late in life. In the more common types of RP, a person will have a history of visual problems at dusk or in poor light, so-called night blindness and a gradual reduction in the field of vision, loss of the outer edges, resulting in a tendency to trip over things. That is, everything is black at night, hence Black Knight. I have only 15% vision although my central vision is near perfect. I can see enough to continue working and, of course, to "play" on my computer.

I am very glad to be giving the opportunity to play in these tournaments and to hopefully be a champion one of these days. Beware Blind-Fury, Spocko, Tony and others, Black Knight is about!


Martin L.

Hi! My name is Martin Landry ("Peter Pawn" on IYT or "Indiagonal Jones" on "Brainking.com" or many others). I'm 44 years old and have 3 children, 2 girls, 1 little boy… separated. I've studied Ancient History, Anthropology and Archeology at the University of Montreal some many years ago, so what attracts me for the game of chess, is not only the game itself but all the "stuff" around… and the history of it for sure… I live in Quebec, Canada, so my natural language is French by the way.

I think the game of chess is something like a kind of "Art" while at the same time has an aspect of "scientific". I learned chess when I was a child from my father who told me how to play the game. Since then I have been fascinated by it, but I took it seriously only in my College years doing some competition in Quebec at the time… Afterwards, with a family, I had to refrain my desire to compete, so more recently I've turned to chess on the internet… which gave me some kind of same opportunities and more time maybe… However, as "virtual chess" is not the same as the "real thing", I often go to a little chess café at Montreal to play with some friends of mine time to time…

Beside the game of chess in itself, I like to play some variations of it, like King's Corner or King's Fortress (seems to be my speciality so far on IYT!) just to see how it works and how it can be interesting so far from the real chess game. At last, may I say we should all applaud our friend, Terry, who keeps records, crosstable and the organization with Tony for the tournament… Thanks, Terry!

Can you solve this famous position from a Fischer game? Write to me when you solve it.

I received the following comments from Tony:

     It looks to me, sitting here several hundred miles away from you, that White can just bust down the barn door with Bxe6! ... QxB or ... Kf8 loses immediately to Qh6, otherwise White can continue with hxg6. Being an avid tactician, I spotted that combination right away. It has been quite a while, but once for over 7 years I ran a column on chess problems for a game club magazine.

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