News

Club reopens on March 15, Summer Cup is divided to 10 rating groups

We are back to Level 1 and can play chess in our club on Monday, March 15! Congratulations!

The Summer Cup was initially planned to run in 7 rounds, but we lost four weeks due to Covid lockdown levels, and three remaining weeks won’t be enough to compete and determine a winner in the Swiss format. Therefore, our club will divide the 80 registered players into 10 groups, each will compete in a 3-round, 8-player Swiss.

If you can’t come on any of these days, March 15, 22 or 29, please let us know and you’ll get a half-point bye. That also means somebody might be left without a game from their group, but that’s currently the reality of what we have.

Hopefully, life will get back to normal for the FIDE-rated rapid tournament and the Autumn Cup after this. Thanks for your understanding!

Online rapid tournament on Monday, Mar 8, with a special prize

Auckland will still be on Level 2 next Monday, so we’ll meet online for another tournament. This time it’ll be a Swiss tournament with the rapid 10m+5s time control. Since March 8 is International Women’s Day, there’ll also be a small celebration. At the end of the tournament, a random player (but not the top 3 finishers) will get a prize in form of a ForwardChess e-book or a Chessable course, either written by Judit Polgar or about her games and chess career.

Judit Polgar has been ranked as the world's number one female chess player for 23 years.

Please register in the NZCF team on Lichess to play, and here’s the tournament link – https://lichess.org/swiss/MBwaXphe

The tournament starts at 7:30 pm on March 8, 2021. Please register and come at about 7:15-20 pm, as it’s Swiss and, unlike Lichess arenas, you’ll forfeit several games if you’re late.

GM Gawain Jones gives a simul on March 25

GM Gawain Jones from the UK is giving a simul to ACC players on March 25 (Auckland will hopefully be on Covid level 1 by then). There are 25 seats only, so please notify Timothy Ha and we’ll put your name on the registration list below. Thanks.

GM Gawain Jones, https://ratings.fide.com/profile/409561

If you want to prepare against Gawain, check his games in the Trusts Open 2010 in Auckland, where he won 6 out of 6, or his win of Tata Steel Challengers 2017 in Wijk aan Zee (and participation in the Tata Steel Masters 2018), or his games on chessgames.com

The current list of players (max 25) participating in the Simul – tentative start time 6:30 pm on Mar 25. Ratings are provided to help GM Gawain 🙂

  1. Po’e-Tofaeono, Hunter (1490)
  2. Po’e-Tofaeono, Grayson (1212)
  3. Zhu, David (1346)
  4. Lewis, Jordan (1623)
  5. Zhang, Kenny (1809)
  6. Ning, Isabelle (1808)
  7. Xie, Felix (2082)
  8. Yu, Weiyang (1150)
  9. Thurner, Anya (1553)
  10. Mao, Daqi (1729)
  11. Park-Tamati, Philli (1639)
  12. Holdo, Karl (1613)
  13. Treanor, Scott (1362)
  14. Willoughby-Ansell, Xxavier (1367)
  15. Deng, Abraham (1531)
  16. Sonnekus, Neil (1536)
  17. Wang, Justin (1605)
  18. Vasudeva, Ayaan (1235)
  19. Somaraju, Sai Vivan Karthikeya (1377)
  20. Lakshmi, Narasimhan Ravi (1458)
  21. Zara, Baraa (1470)
  22. Taha, Shereif (1183)
  23. McClory, John (1204)
  24. Patdu, Ariel (1422)
  25. Yu, Zachary

ALL seats taken.

Feb 28 update: no club chess until Level 1. Online match between clubs on Mar 1

We’re on lockdown again, so no chess club meeting on Monday, Friday or Saturday next week. But there will be chess online.

We’re inviting all NZ players to play in a match between Auckland, Wellington and other places on Monday, March 1, 7:30 pm. Please join the team you want, Auckland, Wellington or NZCF, https://lichess.org/tournament/RpyKGCiU

If your city/region wants to be represented with your own team and you have at least 5 players, please let us know and we’ll edit the match details.

Summer Cup starts on March 1

With Auckland on COVID Level 1, we’ll resume our Monday club nights and start the Summer Cup on March 1 (we hope level 1 will stay). The tournament will be shortened to only 5 rounds, after we lost Feb 15 and 22 to lockdowns.

Please double-check your name in the list of players, https://www.aucklandchess.nz/vega/2021/wwwACCSummerCup/playersname.html

If you want to withdraw from the tournament, please let us know as soon as possible. If you will miss just the first round, please let us know before Monday 6:45pm so we can give you a half-point bye. Thanks!

Saturday Nights plans to reopen Feb 27th at 5:30pm

Hi everyone,

Just a heads up we’re planning to reopen on Feb 27th at 5:30pm for our Saturday Night Junior Chess. We are changing the weekly schedule to start our sessions a bit earlier at 5:30pm-6:30pm, we find that it’s a much better schedule for our parents and students. Currently, not only do we have newer junior players coming along to our evenings, we also have a number of mid level players around 1200-1400 that are coming along. So if you’re up for a challenge and are free on Saturdays, please come along and try it out. Every game looks quite intense now. Alex

ACC is closed on Monday, Feb 15, due to Covid-19, Level 3

Our club is closed tomorrow due to the mini-lockdown for Auckland at Level 3 and the rest of NZ at Level 2.

Let’s play online chess on Monday, Feb 15, 07:30 PM on Lichess, https://lichess.org/tournament/bnZ6hjBz — you need to join the NZCF team on Lichess to play, please provide the real name in Lichess profile or the join request. Thanks!

The start of the Summer Cup will be delayed. Please follow updates on AucklandChess.nz or https://facebook.com/AKLChess