Golden Knights Chess Club News 2005

Year in review
Last updated: Sep 2nd, 2005

Jan - Mar, 2005
We re-started our activity at Cameron Rec Centre in mid-January. The main focus was to rebuild a strong club membership by bringing back from "The Knights" as many students as possible, plus by atracting new members. Last year's activity had been cut extremely short - only 2 lessons between Sep to Dec 2004 - because of leasing problems between BC-RCC and their landlord. These problems happened at the most innapropriate time, since the Canadian Youth Chess Championship (CYCC) 2005 from Victoria, BC was scheduled very early (end of March 2005) to accomodate the World Youth Chess Championship 2005 from Belfort, France.

It took us a while to get back on track. In February we held a chess workshop at the New Westminster public library, mostly dedicated for newcomers in chess. At the end of the same month 12 of our students played in the Provincial Finals and we collected 5 medals. More details (news and wrap-up comments) can be seen HERE!

The CYCC in Victoria proved to be an important moment for us. We entered the competition in 6 out of 10 age groups with a total of 10 members or former members. Andrei and me acted as coaches. All our kids also received full support and encouragement from parents and relatives.

After 4 days of competitive chess in a World Class hotel and 7 tough games for each player, we were happy with the results:
- 2 members qualified for team Canada 2005: Alexandra (U10 girls) and Vlad (U14 boys)
- 9 out of 10 members improved their rating at the end of the Championship
More details (news and wrap-up comments) can be seen HERE!

Apr - Jun 2005
Once the CYCC was out of the way, our focus shifted a bit in both knowledge groups.

ADVANCED GROUP
A couple of members left, choosing to attend other sports. However 3 new ones, plus Marko Mitrovic (a former member), took their place. We focused on theoretical preparation in the opening, with a clear goal in mind: to get the edge early in any game. Alexandra and Vlad needed this for their opening repertoire for WYCC, but the others could use it as well for the local Open tournaments of their choice.

In May we organized a fundraiser tournament for Alexandra and Vlad. More details (news and wrap-up comments) can be seen HERE!

Still in May 5 members of this group played at the annual Paul Keres Memorial in Vancouver, all scoring above expectations and gaining rating points in the process. More details can be seen HERE!

Theory without practice does not give good results, so during this period we organized the annual club tournament for this group. It was setup as a Swiss style, 6 games tournament. Here is the final standings:

FINAL STANDINGS

1 Mitrovic, Marko (964) 5.0/ 6 games
2 Wee, Michael (1321) 4.0/ 5 games
3 Botez, Alexandra (1329) 3.5/ 5 games
4 Torres-Lopez, Alejandro (568) 2.5/ 6 games
5 Parker, Dylan (1023) 2.0/ 4 games
6 Szijjarto, Isaac (974) 2.0/ 6 games
7 Panaitiu, Gabriel (860) 2.0/ 4 games
8 Gaciu, Vlad (1784) 1.0/ 1 game
9 Sorko, Nicholas (711) 1.0/ 5 games
10 Trandafir, Stefan (1731) 0.5/ 1 game
11 Luca, Ana-Maria (964) 0.5/ 5 games

Our club Champion in 2004-2005 is Marko Mitrovic

BEGINNERS GROUP

This was our most popular group, atracting interest from a lot of kids and parents visiting our location. We are delighted to see this continuous flow of new kids! It means that our work is appreciated.

17 new members joined our lessons, making their first baby steps in chess from simple mates, to openings and puzzles. Some were surprised to learn that you can also have a chess homework and it will ccertainly be verified and explained the following lesson. Chess cannot be fun without working habits and even the simplest things need to be understood properly.

Following the same pattern of mixing simple theoretical concepts with practice, all kids got the chance to play in at least one tournament: the one reserved for them. Those showing promising signs, were advised by us to play in local tournaments as well. A summary of everyone's work from this group can be seen HERE!

Going back to this group's club tournament, it was held as a monster (19 players) Round Robin. The end of it came with some very nice surprises, as the top 3 were:
1. Frank (Zhilong), Wang 14 points
2. George Luca 13 points
3. Bryant Vergara 8 points

A couple of words about our winners:
1. Frank - being only 5 years old and possessing some good chess knowledge, makes him our most promising player for the future. We will continue to offer him challenges suitable for his age and will guide his development carefully!

2. George - he has returned after 3 years of absence, but has not lost his funny spirit one bit. He will enjoy a game no matter what the result would be. Losing a game is not the end of the World for him!

3. Bryant - he managed to edge 3 other club mates in the fight for the 3rd place. He is a true fighter and will work even more once we are back from the summer vacation.

All the other kids enjoyed their games, behave really friendly and were not discouraged even after losing some games. It is our hope they will come back to learn more and improve. At the end of our last meeting, we took a couple of nice group pictures:
ALL of us
STUDENTS

Enjoy your vacation and see you next school year!