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DURBAN CHESS CLUB (founded in August 1893) "who teaches learns" Last updated: 24th May 2019 |
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IMPORTANT NOTICE TO MEMBERS
CLUB CHAMPIONSHIPS ALMOST COMPLETED
Please call Desmond on 083-788-8070 (or send him a whatsapp) BEFORE NOON on Thursday if you are unable to play
a particular game. It is extremely important that members communicate apologies before noon on Thursdays.
Members are expected to complete the club membership form and pay their
subscriptions before the club championships start in March.
The club started its annual championships on 14th March 2019. The committee has arranged that the Championship
and Candidates sections will be FIDE rated. Both events are 10 player round robins, with the time control of
90 minutes each with a 30 second increment.
When I last reported, it was impossible to predict a winner in Section A, as so many games had been postponed. Now,
with 7 games not yet completed, we know the winner has to be Danisa, Subke or Rooplal. Here are the
results so far.
Section B was being led by Riccardo Benedetti and Senzo Msimango but, as I predicted, they have now been overtaken. The
new leaders are Chad Millard and Jorah Soojay. With one game to complete, between Jorah and Musa Sibeko, here are the
results so far.
MTOBOYI CLEAN SWEEPS SECTION C
The C section of the Club Championships was a 9 round Swiss section. It was won by Sipho Mtoboyi with a clean
score of 9 out of 9. Second place was taken by Devon Govender. Here are the
final results.
NEW SA UNDER 8 CHAMPION
Congratulations to Daaruk Kumarasamy on becoming the South African under 8 champion, with the fine score of 8 out of 9.
Daaruk with his father at the SAJCC (photo from Facebook)
MOSS KOLNIK MEMORIAL JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2019
The club began its first tournament of the year on 10th January 2019. Jason Subke convincingly won the event,
followed closely by Desmond Rooplal. Detailed tournament results can be found on
chess-results.
NEW ARBITERS
Congratulations go to Riccardo Benedetti and Desmond Rooplal for scoring over 80% on the
February 2019 Arbiters exam. They are now qualified as Regional Arbiters.
Ryan Kippen also took the exam and passed as Tournament Supervisor.
AN EPIC BATTLE
On the 21st February, I saw the world record for the most moves in a game of chess broken. The top 2 programs,
Stockfish and LCZero, just had a 362 move draw in their 86th match game! After 84 games the match was tied at
42 each, the equivalent of 7 human title matches. Those interested in this epic battle can find the games at the
TCEC chessdom website.
The main point of interest is that Leela Chess Zero uses search methods that are radically different to the
traditional alpha-beta search used by Stockfish 10, the highest rated program. Instead, as explained in this
article by Stephan Platz,
it is using Monte Carlo techniques, similar to those made famous by the Alpha Zero program.
Footnote: Their 100 game match was won by Stockfish 10-9 with 81 draws.
SA JUNIOR CLOSED CHESS CHAMPIONSHIPS 2019
Chess SA has announced that their 2019 Junior Closed will take place at Kopanong in Benoni from 16th to
23rd March 2019. Congratulations to our junior members Daaruk Kumarasamy, Jorah Soojay, Keniesha Govender,
Lesharn Govender, Charlotte Millard and Naseem Essa, whose names are on the
list of qualifiers
published on Thursday 10th January.
Recent updates: championship results/pairings, Moss Kolnik results, profile Guy Miller, new arbiters,
epic TCEC battle, Junior Closed qualifiers, calendar for 2019, stories for 2018 archived.
For previous news stories refer to my News Archive page, which
contains links to previous news stories going back to 2004.