David Phelps wins the 2020 Club Championship!

 

Congratulations to 

David Phelps

The 2020 Community Chess Club

 of Rochester Champion!

Rochester, NY October 28, 2020.  In the Final Round of the 2020 CCCR Championship at the Chess Center, David Phelps and Henry Swing agreed to a draw in an exciting endgame battle.  David won the tournament by tie-breaks with 3.5 points.  Henry Swing took 2nd place.  Ken McBride took 3rd place by tie-breaks with 3 points, and Clif Kharroubi took 4th place.  The U1800 winner was Jamshed Ahmed by tie-breaks with 3 points. The U1500 winner was Nathan Shaffer with 2 points.  The U1200 winner was Richard Warmus with 1.5 points.  The U1000 winner was Robert Fulton with 1 point.  There were 28 club members participating this year's annual club championship.  Congratulations to all the prize winners!  Thanks to everyone who took part in this year's club championship.  Thanks to Ron Lohrman who was the tournament director.  Join us for Awards Night on November 11, 2020 at 7:30pm.  

Round 4 with David Phelps (left) and Henry Swing

David Phelps - 1st place

Henry Swing - 2nd place

2020 CCCR Championship Participants

Clif Kharroubi (right front) won his game against Toby Rizzo

Ken McBride (right) won his game against Eric Piato

Final Standings:

Cross Table:

Click Here for the Photo Gallery

Jamshed Ahmed (right) won his game against TJ Weaver.

Ryan Beh (right) won his game against Don Stubblebine.

Awards Night 
will be held at the Rochester Chess Center 

on Wednesday, Nov. 11th, 2020 at 7:30pm. 

Please join us for the award ceremony.  Cake will be served in skittles room.

The club's regularly scheduled chess games will follow the awards ceremony.

James Attaya

2020 CCCR Club Championship: Round 3

Wednesday, Oct. 21st was round #3 of the club championship.  The chess action took place at the Chess Center in Rochester, New York.  It was an exciting night and there were plenty of great chess battles on the 64 squares.  The current club champion, Lev Paciorkowski, has withdrawn from the tournament in order to participate for Norms at the 14th Annual SPICE CUP in St. Louis (https://gamesmaven.io/chessdailynews), Missouri.  This means that the Community Chess Club will have a new champion this year. 

Toby Rizzo (right) won against Peter Craig.

David Phelps (left) won against Ken McBride

Henry Swing (right) won against Don Stubblebine

CCCR member TJ Weaver has provided these games and analysis:

Click here for a link to the photo gallery

Round 4 will be held next Wednesday, October 28.

2020 CCCR Club Championship: Round 2

Round 2 was held on Wednesday, October 14, and as usual there was plenty of excitement! We had a turnaround upset on board 2, and at one point I had an objectively lost position on board 1. Let's dive into the games.

Let's start with our game of the week, which was Henry Swing's (1936) win over Clif Kharroubi (2098), overcoming a more than 150 point rating gap.

A lucky escape for Henry to be sure - after having a nearly lost position out of the opening he was still able to keep the game going and ended up winning after Clif's critical blunder on move 50.

In my game against TJ, after being unfamiliar with the opening I came up with a bad plan and found myself in a difficult position. While 9. ... f6!? would have still been OK for black, the exchange sacrifice I played instead was just unsound - I missed a couple key tactical details and also overestimated the long-term weakness of white's king.

Nevertheless, TJ went astray with his reckless kingside expansion, and despite my bad opening I was able to take advantage of my opponent's mistaken strategy beyond move 14.

I have one other game from this week too, which was the board 5 encounter between Ryan and Ken:

A tough long game. Ryan was hanging in there until losing the pawn on a2, when with two outside connected passers Ken was able to bring in the full point.

Here are the full results for this round:

Round 3 will be held next Wednesday, October 21.

2020 CCCR Club Championship: Round 1

 Round 1 of the 2020 Club Championship was held last Wednesday on 10/07. This year I'll be spotlighting one game from each round (typically an upset) and analyzing it.

Even with many of the boards seeing large rating disparities in round 1, we had at least two very significant upsets, one of which I've gotten the game score for.

The first was Vinnie Basile's (1212) win over Greg Miller (1820), which I have as the game of the week below:

The second upset I know about was Shaffer's draw against Stubblebine, another roughly 600 point rating gap. Here is the notation for that one:

A very back-and-forth struggle, where white won a pawn in the opening, then black won the pawn back, and in the RN vs RB ending black was surely winning most of the way before losing the queenside pawns. In the final position, white is actually winning the king and pawn ending since black's king is held back on the kingside!

On the top boards, the higher rated players generally prevailed, with David Phelps winning as black against David Lusignan on board 4 and Peter Craig winning against Aidan Kharroubi on board 3. Clif Kharroubi won by forfeit on board 2 and I won my game against Arianna Kharroubi.

Below are some of the other games I was able to get the notation for this round - here is Attaya - Rizzo from board 6:

And Lusignan - Phelps from board 4:

Finally, here are the standings after the opening round:

Don't miss round 2 next week!

2020 Club Championship

The 24th Annual Community Chess Club Championship

Starts Wednesday Night, October 7th 2020.  Four Rounds G/80d5.  

One game per week at the Rochester Chess Center.  

Registration is now closed for this event.

Games and updates will be posted for each round.

Click here to view the 2020 CCCR Club Championship Flyer