Author: josh.kuperman@gmail.com

2024-25 Club Championship

This year’s club championship will start on September 29, 2024, at 7:30 PM at the Saratoga Springs United Methodist Church, 175 5th Av Saratoga Springs, NY  with registration from 7 PM.

To play in the club championship requires $20 membership dues to the club and current USCF membership. 

We have one tournament with two parts a fall championship tournament and a spring championship tournament. (To the USCF they will look like separate tournaments. This lets everyone’s results and rating points get calculated in a timely fashion. The date for the spring portion has yet to be determined.)

The time limit with be 60+30 (1 hr with a 30 sec increment; clock setting assistance will be available).

We decided to have separate cash prizes for the two tournaments this year. The number of rounds and the prize amounts will depend on entries. 

Announcement of new chess mailing list

I have created a new mailing list. Greater Capital District Chess Discussion or https://groups.io/g/capdistchess. I intend to announce its existence using the social media methods open to me. I believe it is important to have a two-way chess dedicated means of communication between local chess players. I sketched out some of what I’m hoping for in the First post. Hopefully, signing up is straight forward, if you wish to sign up and are having difficulty email me mailto:josh.kuperman@gmail.com and I will send you an invitation to join.

Saratoga Staunton Club June 2020 News

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.

Join our Lichess Team

Saratoga Staunton Club

I copied what the the Skidmore Chess Club did, by forming a team on lichess: https://lichess.org/team/saratoga-staunton-club. Every Sunday we will have a blitz (g5 – no dealy or increment) tournament automatic pairings by lichess join or leave whenever you like for 90 minutes starting at approximate 7:15. I check lichess daily and before our events for new team members. I challenge everyone who signs up to two casual correspondence games with the maximum time limit. You need to create a free lichess account before joining the team.

Get The Message Out!

I am trying to get this out to everyone who has internet access and wants to play chess on a regular basis with a local club. While everyone is welcome, my goal is to let players from local clubs stay active by playing each other. I am trying to get the local club players from the capital district who have played each other over the board or might do so in the future to join our club.

Future Plans

I have no idea how long it will be before we have our regular in person meetings again. I am looking into other things that are possible online such as rated tournaments and team battles.

Fisrt Post of 2012

So I am hoping to write a post for our blog and send out our Mailchimp newsletter at least once a month so all the club members will know what is going on. I am continuing to pursue two major chess-related activities: comparing chess web sites and looking for the best way to have an informal online tournament for the club. Suggestions are welcome.

On Sunday, Dec 29,2019, I played, terribly, at the Finn Chess Club. While there I mentioned to Dave Finnerman how I downloaded a game from The Internation Correspondence Chess Federation, https://www.iccf.com/,that was mentioned in a note while I was training using Chessable’s, https://www.chessable.com/, going through their free course on the Two Knights Defense. I also mentioned, how I needed to use David Barne’s program pgn-extract, https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/djb/pgn-extract/ to pull out the one game I wanted from the games I downloaded.

So Dave asked me, “what’s Chessable?”, and suggested I post something to the Finn Club Facebook page.


I first heard about Chessable on the Detroit Chess Killers Podcast, https://anchor.fm/dereke-wilder. Chessable is a web site, started by IM John Bartholomew, that uses its trademarked MoveTrainer to teach chess openings, endings, and tactics by rote. They sell courses, provide free courses, and allow users to create and upload their own courses.

One problem with Chessable is that course authors prejudge their audience as to how much detail to provide. I was working through the course, “Two Knights Defence” and saw this line with the note included as a comment below.

(Please note in an ideal world there would be one game below as the first is just a suggested line and the second is a full game. The first line given in the line in the Chessable course with the course notes included. It is less complicated than the line in the second game which is more complex, much better and more interesting. No one in their right mind would ever play 9. Bxc6+. And if they did they would likely pick a better square than f3 on move 11. )

In other news, Glen Gausewitz wins the club championship.

Glen Gausewitz won the Saratoga Staunton Club Championship. The full result table is here, http://www.uschess.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=198 and it was an unusually close event.

Staunton Club Annual Championship Tournament

The Staunton Club Championship Tournament will start on 9/22/2019 at 7:30 PM as a double round-robin. (adjustments will be made in order to keep it under 12 rounds ) The combined annual club membership – entry fee is $20 with 100% being returned as prizes;  based on currently projected entries 75% going to 1st and 25% going to 2nd. Time control is Game/105 d10. As always, players should notify their opponents if they are unable to make it, and players are free to make alternate arrangements to play their games at different times and locations. USCF membership is required. We will be accepting entries through Sunday, Oct 6

The club meets at the Saratoga Springs United Methodist Church
175 5th Ave, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866 (for directions I recommend google maps.)

You can get announcements from the club in three ways.

  1. The Eastern New York Chess Association blog. http://enyca.org/
  2. You can sign up for our newsletter http://eepurl.com/dG2BkT
  3. Here at our blog https://saratoga-staunton.club.

Feel free to email Josh  josh.kuperman@gmail.com with any questions.

2015 Annual Meeting Reminder

Reminder: The Annual Meeting of the Saratoga Staunton Club is on September 15 at 7:30 PM in the Saratoga Springs United Methodist Church 175 5th Ave, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866This is a reminder that our annual meeting is next week Sunday
September 15, 2018. The meeting will begin at 7:30 PM

Our current officers are:
President Josh Kuperman
Vice President Glen Gaussewitz
Secretary Ed Murphy
Treasurer Alan LeCours

I have posted a proposed agenda to our website at

https://saratoga-staunton.club/agenda-for-2019-annual-meeting/

I encourage all members to share their ideas, for promoting the club and chess, and we can add them to the agenda.

I have posted a highly abbreviated copy of our last year’s meeting minutes on our web site.

https://saratoga-staunton.club/2018-meeting-minutes/

I encourage anyone with the time to look them over. Because we are still looking for the full set of last years minutes the 2018 minutes are highly abbreviated.

The crosstable from last years club championship is online at:
http://www.uschess.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=198

 You can sign up to receive our newsletter through MailChimp at  http://eepurl.com/dG2BkT or as a blog through your feed reader at https://saratoga-staunton.club. Feel free to email Josh Kuperman josh.kuperman@gmail.com with any questions.

Saratoga Staunton Club Annual meeting September 15, 2019

The Saratoga Staunton Club’s annual meeting will be held Sunday, September 15, 2019, at 7:30 PM. The start date for the club championship will be on the agenda, but most likely either one week later or three weeks later. Combined membership/entry fee is $20 and USCF membership is required.

Notes on the tournament: For the past few years it has been a double round-robin Game/100 Delay/10 but the detailed decision will be made at the annual meeting based on the number of people who sign up to play. It is usually a relatively small tournament, run semi-informally, allowing for players to reschedule games, including when mutually convenient playing in other locations at alternate times, as needed to accommodate the players.  It is a great way to play one rated game a week.

There is no need to attend the annual meeting to play in the
tournament, in the past entries have even been accepted a week or two after the tournament has started. The full details will be announced after the annual meeting and before the start of the tournament.

Other potential annual meeting topics will be the election of officers, hosting other events, fielding a team for area competitions, and creating and maintaining a web presence through our blog, website, and mailing list.

The club meets at the Saratoga Springs United Methodist Church, 175 Fifth Av. Saratoga Springs, NY. New members are welcome and
encouraged.

You can get announcements from the club in three ways.

1. We will continue to post major announcements (Annual Meeting and Tournaments) on the Eastern New York Chess Association blog. http://enyca.org/

2. You can sign up for our newsletter http://eepurl.com/dG2BkT

3. You can also sign up for the newsletter on our website (when the signup is working) as well as subscribe to our blog at https://saratoga-staunton.club.

Feel free to email Josh Kuperman josh.kuperman@gmail.com with any questions.