The Chess Coroner: #422 Garden State League Founded! Season Starts March 3rd.

The Chess Coroner: #422 Garden State League Founded! Season Starts March 3rd.

Per Chess Blogger " The Chess Coroner" these are the New Jersey Chess Clubs that form the new Garden State League.

The Garden State Chess League will begin play on March 3rd, 2009 with at least 4 teams: West Orange, Kenilworth, Hamilton and Summit. The latter’s player-pool will include members of Springfield’s Checkmate CC.


Other possible clubs include Staten Island & Westfield. Both had representatives present at Thursday’s founding meeting but scheduling again kept Dumont & Newark Sleepless Knights away. Hopefully they are still interested. Roselle is now unlikely to join. Union County College is a dark-horse.

The entry deadline for clubs/teams is 9 p.m., Friday, February 20th, 2009.
The $10 per team entry fee must be received by Saturday, February 28th, 2009.

Rules changes and additions since the preliminary, December 4th meeting :
The time control will be G/80 (rather than G/90).
There will be 4 boards per team.
The maximum 4-board average will be 1900.0
If an unrated player is used, the average of the other players on his/her team must be 1900.0 or less.
The 2008 USCF Annual Rating List will determine player ratings for the Winter-Spring 2009 season.
Matches will take place at the West Orange CC on the 1st Tuesday of each month & start at 8 p.m. The paired teams have the option of playing elsewhere (within the given-month, if I remember correctly).

For example, if Kenilworth was scheduled to be the road team vs. Summit in the 1st round, they could play at Summit on 3/9 or 3/16, instead of having both teams travel.

Elected officers on Thursday :

President - John Hagerty
Vice President - John Moldovan

More info can be found in the above link. This chess blog is located within the chess web page " The Kenilworth Chess Club " titled " The Chess Coroner " The date of that Chess Coroner blog was December 18, 2008 which contained info about the new Garden State Chess League.

Bryan Smith Sole First Place Winner at National Chess Congress 2008

International Master Bryan Smith of Pennsylvania (a former resident of Alaska) scored clear first in the National Chess Congress at Philadelphia, PA during the Thanksgiving weekend.

His final score was 5.5 points out of six rounds which consisted of five wins and one draw. Here are some of those games from NCC 2008. Also a link is provided for a collection of his games that he has played through out the years.

National Chess Congress Premier Section Stangings

Chess Game Collection Of Bryan Smith



Bryan Smith's World Open 2001 Games

Listed below are four games from his complete victory at the 2008 National Chess Congress

Erenburg-Smith.pgn




Smith-Kacheishvili.pgn



Smith-Kritz.pgn



Smith-Melekhina.pgn

Mackenzie Molner Winner 2008 New Jersey Chess Championship

Please Note: Annotations and Games posted here are courtesy of Michael Goellner from his chess blog The Kenilworthian from his post Best Games from NJ Open 9-09-2008.

Scoring five points out of Six rounds of hard fought chess Mackenzie Molner is the new chess champion of the 62nd New Jersey Open. Below is one of his wins over chess master Jim West.


MACKENZIE S MOLNER

CrossTables of 2008 NJ Chess Open

Blogs on the New Jersey Chess Championship

As of Tuesday September 2, 2008 there are updated blogs on the 2008 New Jersey Chess Championship that was held over the Labor Day Weekend.

Those chess blogs are Jim West on Chess , Kenilworth Chess Club Blog and of course Diamondback Chess.

Best games from NJ Open

Jim West games from the New Jersey Open

Ziping NJ Open game

Labor Day Madness in US Chess Life


I like to include in this post my last game I played there which resulted in a hard fought draw. I played an Octogenarian and his name is Al. A very nice gentleman with a will to win. At the last move, he had a won game, but offered a draw. What a gentleman !