Author: Alex Huang

Hi everyone,

Tonight on December 5th, we will finish off the year with our Saturday Night Junior Chess for this year. It’s been a very hectic year and I’m glad everything worked out for most of us. Next year we will resume at the start of February.

For those of you who are interested in playing more chess in December can play on Friday Night Casual Chess, which is dedicated to more complete beginners to beginners for adults and kids alike. This is held at the Auckland Chess Centre from 6:30pm to 8:00pm. Wayne McDougall will be running that event for another two weeks this year. Please see the post about Friday Night Casual Chess for more details.

Thank you for all those who came along to our evenings. We had many very interesting and close games during this year. Our evening is still considered quite casual, with a bit more competition from strong kids and a stepping stone towards to the tougher Monday Night Chess.

Happy holidays!

Alexander

Hi everyone, we will restart the weekly Saturday Junior Night Chess at the ACC tomorrow night (Oct 17th) from 6pm to 7pm. We welcome everyone to come along if you want to play some chess!

– Alex

Hi everyone, we are starting the new Saturday Junior Chess Night (runs every Saturdays from 6pm to 7pm and replacing the old Friday Night Chess) at the ACC this evening. It is a casual play event designed for kids from beginners to around 1400 play strength. Any adults or more advanced players are also welcome to come along to play. Registration starts at 5:50pm and play starts at 6:05pm or as soon as everyone is registered to play at the event for the night. The cost is a voluntary gold coin donation. Come and play chess whenever you have time! More details will be added to our website here. Alex

Hi everyone, the Friday Night junior chess (which originally we planned to start tomorrow for this year) will be postponed until further notice. We expect to reopen in a few weeks time. Sorry for any inconvenience. Will let you know on this website when we do start again this year. Alex

We’re excited to announce the new format for our Friday junior nights. For a long time we have been asked by parents when we will have tutorials for the junior club. It is finally here!

Tutorials will start at 6:30pm on Friday nights. For more information, please find our updated page for Friday Night Chess: https://www.aucklandchess.nz/friday-chess/

Note that we have just updated both the Friday Night schedule and our ACC Junior tournaments for the year. We are looking forward to another wonderful year of junior chess!

Alex

Just a quick reminder that our Friday Nights will start again on February 9th.
The schedule has been updated:
https://www.aucklandchess.nz/friday-chess/schedule/
The Friday club nights are designed for players who enjoy playing rapid games. It’s mostly for juniors, though adults are welcome to play too. We have included a number of different variants this year that we will run along with the core events, which are the rapid and the blitz. Starts at 6:30pm and runs through till 8:30pm.

The Friday Night Schedule has been adjusted to better suit our players who dislike the fast blitz games (like the regular 5+2) and love playing rapid games (like the moderate 15+5). Now one blitz tournament will only run, after every one (or sometimes two) rapid tournaments. Rapid tournaments will generally run for 3-4 nights, whereas most blitz tournaments will only run for one night – instead of previously, where some of them were run for two nights.

Also we have added a number of fun and exciting formats, I encourage you all to check out the new schedule. A few additional formats are currently being planned/tested, and being finely tuned for our Friday Night casual events. Please check out our new schedule here: http://www.aucklandchess.nz/friday-chess/schedule/

You will also see that the time controls change for different events and seasons (i.e. Slightly slower during winter and slightly faster during spring).

This week we will start the Autumn Knockout 20+0 Tournament (Ro.16/Ro.8, expandable to Ro.32 for 32 players). I encourage you all to come along and play some interesting and exciting chess.

Alex

After discussions with the team, we’ve decided that instead of charging $80/year upfront, it would be fairer to charge non club members, a voluntary $2 per night. This makes it more flexible for the parents and the players. The parents do not need to worry about whether if their child would be interested to play in all of the sessions during the year. It will also be much less of a burden, having to pay it all in one go. This new pricing structure will take effect starting after the July holidays on July 28th.

We’ve also decided that we will also have holidays during school holidays, so that it gives you guys some extra time and the flexibility to use the time for other things other than chess. This does not apply for this current school holiday, and players should turn up on the 28th of April to play at our 9-round Autumn Rapid.

So far the response to our Friday Night events has been positive and the players are really enjoying their time playing chess at our club.

It’s been a struggle to get everything running perfectly but we’re getting there.

Sorry for any inconvenience and thank you for your patience.

Alex

Hi all, just a reminder that the Autumn Rapid for Friday Night starts on the 28th of April. It runs through three sessions. It is very difficult for me to contact people since I don’t have any of your numbers. I will be collecting the fees from non-members (those who only wish to play on Fridays) and will also keep a list of the contact numbers of those who play regularly on our Friday Nights, so I could txt the parents about our club events. Tonight there were very few turnouts, mostly because people thought it is the schools holidays, but our Friday Night also runs through School Holidays too (unless to be changed in the future). It was confusing because we were closed on Good Friday and parents easily forget that we are open the week right after.

Hope to see you guys again in our future events.

Alex