We are having two weekly online blitz tournaments
Every Sunday and Tuesday I have been creating online blitz tournaments at https://chess.com and https://lichess.org. It is an informal attempt to keep the members of the club connected and I will continue to do this until we can resume meeting together. The concept of club or team is common in online chess. I am requiring membership in the Saratoga Staunton Club teams to play, mostly to make sure we can use the chat. ( I play a lot of one minute blitz on chess.com and found that a few players will flood the chat with distractions in an attempt to get a few seconds advantage.)
How to join the lichess tournaments
You have to create an account, email me mailto:josh.kuperman@gmail.com if this is a problem. Once you have an account you want to join our team https://lichess.org/team/saratoga-staunton-club and then every Sunday I will create a tournament to start at 7:15. Lichess let’s me create the tournament an hour before it begins at the earliest, so I try to log into lichess around 6:30 and check for new members and create the tournament.
How to join chess.com tournaments
You have to create an account with chess.com. You should be able to join the online club by going to https://chess.com/club/saratoga-staunton-club%20 and asking to sign up. Chess.com allows setting up tournaments a few days in advance. Our tournament for Tuesday at 7:15 is at https://www.chess.com/live#r=214658%20 but you cannot register until one hour before it starts.
These are 5 minute Arena Tournaments for now
There has been a lot of recent online chess activity lately. It is possible to play USCF online rated games on Chess.com. The Continental Chess Association has announced tournaments that will be played online and require you to stay visible through zoom. Arena tournaments are the least formal. I accepted the defaults but can change them if it means more people will play. It is an experiment to provide some online competition among people who already know each other.
An important suggestion
As I use a name I’ve used for other online sites that had nothing to do with chess, I have been able to use the same name, sapolion, in all the online sites. It will probably be a good thing to identify yourself to your opponents in the chat.