Day 3 Summary

Dear Prairie Chess Camp Families,

As we hit the halfway point of the camp and with that milestone, changed things up a bit. The Red class moved to Gokul’s room for their “block day,” letting the Green “beginner” class move into the rotation with the other instructors. Trevor and Anish worked with the Green Group on exploiting early opening mistakes, and winning when you are up a queen. As they worked with more advancing players, they learned about developing with a target in mind, to help coordinate the player’s pieces. With the advanced group, the theme there was opening the center to create an attack on the opponent's king before it can castle. Joseph lead a discussion with Niko on a tactically complex position from one of his own games. Gokul and Anjali worked on endgames with the Red Group, teaming students up to solve endgame positions where the attacking player has to queen their pawn to win and the defending player has to find hidden resources to salvage a draw while down material. Finally, yesterday, I said that I would share more about Alex’s and Noah’s group and their effort to solve tactical puzzles. This is very much a hands-on lesson where students work independantly or in small groups.

There are many types of tactics around various themes such as “win material,” “find the checkmate” or simply find the “positionally winning move.” With the Green Group, the first set of puzzles focuses on finding a move that captures an undefended piece. As Alex works with the advaning players, tactical motifs such as “pins, forks, skewers, deflection, etc.” are introduced. It is also import to be able to calculate a series of moves that force checkmate. Introductory puzzles start out with finding one-move checkmates. The difficulty increase by finding a series of two, three, or more “forcing” moves that lead to checkmate. A forcing move is a move that creates a threat. A check is one threat, but simply threatening checkmate or winning a piece may be another. Students receive a large number of these puzzles throughout the week and are keeping them in a folder that they can bring home at the end of the chess camp to share.

We had pasta, garlic bread, and salad from Zio Johno’s for lunch today. We continue to eat our way through the bananas, pears, apples, and grapes along with the other snacks like cheeseheads, Nutri-grain bars, and fruit chews. The weather continues to cooperate and so we went outside for our morning, lunch, and afternoon recess.

As you know, we have been playing tournaments in the afternoon. On Monday we played in our in an all-student chess camp open tournament. Yesterday, it was mixed up a bit where we played in groups of 16 with a slower time control. Today, we mixed the players up into 6 groups so that players could have other opponents. Tomorrow, we will create equal teams and play a “team match,” which works much like a tennis match with players from each team going head to head. We continue to learn from our games with a player-instructor review to identify strengths and areas for improvement. Results of the tournament are posted on the Chess Camp Day 3 Tournament Page at https://www.chessiniowa.org/2022Camp/Day3.

Be sure to check out the photos today. Tomorrow morning we will take a Chess Camp group photo with all students and staff. Camp pictures for Day 3 are available online at: https://photos.app.goo.gl/gQuRWdW7Bwdzg3SA6

Below are three examples of some “simple” tactics puzzles that our students can solve.

Prairie Chess Camp Wednesday Swiss -- Purple

No. Gr Name(Team) Rate Rd 1 Rd 2 Rd 3 Score

1. 3 HUANG, Eric (Yueze) (2) ...... 980 W4 W6 W3 3.0

2. 7 NIXON, Nolon A (3) ........... 961 W5 L3 W6 2.0

3. 4 AJOYKUMAR, Aarud (5) ......... 842 W7 W2 L1 2.0

4. 6 NIEMEIER, Connor (6) ......... 807 L1 W8 W7 2.0

5. 5 CORIGLIONE, Lucius (7) ....... 800 L2 D7 W8 1.5

6. 4 VEEDER, Cole (4) ............. 950 W8 L1 L2 1.0

7. 2 HOLM, Kelton (1) ............. 1191 L3 D5 L4 0.5

8. 5 SENFT, William (8) ........... 538 L6 L4 L5 0.0

Prairie Chess Camp Wednesday Swiss -- Orange

No. Gr Name(Team) Rate Rd 1 Rd 2 Rd 3 Score

1. 8 HOOVIK, Aidan Jame (1) ....... 698 W7 W6 W4 3.0

2. 6 KIM, Evan (8) ................ unr D4 W3 W6 2.5

3. 6 WONG, Vincent H (2) .......... 647 D5 L2 W7 1.5

4. 6 CHRISTIANSON, Oscar (4) ...... 567 D2 W5 L1 1.5

5. 5 WALSTROM, Tyler (6) .......... 365 D3 L4 W8 1.5

6. 6 KANDEL, Nirvan (3) ........... 605 W8 L1 L2 1.0

7. 6 YANG, Daniel (5) ............. 528 L1 W8 L3 1.0

8. 6 HOLST, Tyler L (7) ........... 264 L6 L7 L5 0.0

Prairie Chess Camp Wednesday Swiss -- Brown

No. Gr Name(Team) Rate Rd 1 Rd 2 Rd 3 Score

1. 5 DONATO, Davi Henri (3) ....... 632 W12 W5 W6 3.0

2. 5 BUJAKOWSKA, Krysty (4) ....... 594 D10 W9 D3 2.0

3. 8 SCHMITZ, Nicholas (5) ........ 590 W11 D6 D2 2.0

4. 7 LONDON, Benjamin F (12) ...... 101 W9 D10 D5 2.0

5. 6 ROCHA, Graham (1) ............ 708 W7 L1 D4 1.5

6. 3 WONG, Aaron H (2) ............ 635 W8 D3 L1 1.5

7. 8 ZOLL, Hunter (7) ............. 420 L5 W12 D8 1.5

8. 7 MERRILL, Evan (8) ............ 368 L6 W11 D7 1.5

9. 7 CRISWELL, Henry E (6) ........ 577 L4 L2 W10 1.0

10. 6 IBEAWUCHI, Justin (10) ....... 289 D2 D4 L9 1.0

11. 5 TON, Chan Phong (11) ......... 164 L3 L8 W12 1.0

12. 3 KANDEL, Prisha (9) ........... 334 L1 L7 L11 0.0

Prairie Chess Camp Wednesday Swiss -- Indigo

No. Gr Name(Team) Rate Rd 1 Rd 2 Score

1. 5 VERRY, Stellah (2) ........... 122 W11 W7 2.0

2. 4 ROCHA, James (10) ............ unr W10 W8 2.0

3. 4 NAVEEN-KUMAR, Siddharth (9) .. unr D9 W10 1.5

4. 8 POSPISIL, Geo Jack (3) ....... 102 L5 W11 1.0

5. 4 CASTRO, Amon (5) ............. unr W4 A9 1.0

6. 5 SAID, Joury (11) ............. unr L8 W12 1.0

7. 5 BLUM, Martin (4) ............. unr W12 L1 1.0

8. 5 SHAH, Riddhi (12) ............ unr W6 L2 1.0

9. 5 MURPHY, Sean (8) ............. unr D3 A5 0.5

10. 8 ELLERHOFF, Odyn Sa (1) ....... 573 L2 L3 0.0

11. 5 MCMURRIN, Anthony (7) ........ unr L1 L4 0.0

12. 5 DALY, Ian (6) ................ unr L7 L6 0.0

Prairie Chess Camp Wednesday Swiss -- Violet

No. Gr Name(Team) Rate Rd 1 Rd 2 Rd 3 Score

1. 1 CHIMENTI, Liana (1) .......... 416 W11 W9 W5 3.0

2. 1 BROWN, Elias (2) ............. 181 W8 D4 W7 2.5

3. 3 NIXON, Navianna (5) .......... 119 L5 W10 W8 2.0

4. 4 CAVALIER, Kellen R (6) ....... 109 -X- D2 D6 2.0

5. 5 DRAHOS, Weston (10) .......... unr W3 W6 L1 2.0

6. 3 WOOD, Kale (4) ............... 148 W10 L5 D4 1.5

7. 3 KISSEL, Weston (3) ........... 175 L9 W11 L2 1.0

8. 3 GURTOVAYA, Zhanna (9) ........ 101 L2 -B- L3 1.0

9. 3 CHRISTOPHERSEN, Oskar (8) .... 101 W7 L1 L10 1.0

10. 2 KARANAM, Niksheeth (11) ...... unr L6 L3 W9 1.0

11. 3 BREWER, Hazel (7) ............ 103 L1 L7 -U- 0.0

12. 2 NICOLA, Lasya (12) ........... unr -F- -U- -U- 0.0

Prairie Chess Camp Wednesday Swiss -- Teal

No. Gr Name(Team) Rate Rd 1 Rd 2 Rd 3 Score

1. 2 NICOLA, Lasya (8) ............ unr W6 W7 D4 2.5

2. 1 HAJEK, Bennet (5) ............ unr W3 D4 W7 2.5

3. 2 SAID, Adam (9) ............... unr L2 W6 W8 2.0

4. 2 SZYMANSKI, Sam (10) .......... unr W10 D2 D1 2.0

5. 0 GURUNG, Nirvick (4) .......... unr L7 D8 D10 1.0

6. 1 NETOLICKY, Cooper (7) ........ unr L1 L3 W11 1.0

7. 1 BUSSEWITZ, Bo (2) ............ unr W5 L1 L2 1.0

8. 1 YANG, Jayson (11) ............ unr D9 D5 L3 1.0

9. 1 LI, Chale (6) ................ unr D8 -U- -U- 0.5

10. 0 GURTOVAYA, Dasha (3) ......... unr L4 -U- D5 0.5

11. 3 BREWER, Hazel-RE (7) ......... 103 L1 L7 -U- 0.0

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