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.