Welcome. My name is Norman E. and I am the secretary of the Cedar Grove Chess Club, which means I keep the score sheets, the crosstable, the coffee money and, as of this summer, this page. We are a small club — a dozen or so regulars and another dozen who come when they can — in a small town, and we have been meeting on Monday nights for eleven years. We play for the pleasure of it. Some of us are fairly strong and some of us are learning, and we have found that the strong ones enjoy teaching about as much as the learners enjoy being taught, so it works out.

This page has our meeting information, the results of the club championship that just finished, a few puzzles for those starting out, and some advice I wish someone had given me forty years ago.

Every Monday evening, 6:30 to 9:00, in the community room of the Cedar Grove Public Library (downstairs, past the children's section; you'll hear the clocks). The library closes at 9 and the librarian is very kind about it but does mean it. We don't meet on legal holidays that fall on a Monday.

The club owns eight sets and boards and four clocks. Bring your own if you have them. Coffee is 25 cents; the tin is on the honor system and has been for eleven years and has never once come up short, which tells you something about chess players.

A typical Monday: casual games from 6:30, a short lesson or a look at a game at about 7:15 for anyone who wants it, and then rated club games or the ladder until closing. First-timers should just walk in. Somebody will find you a game inside of two minutes.

This year's championship was a six-player round robin, one game a week, played from mid-August through September 20, 1999, at 40 moves in 90 minutes and then 30 minutes to finish. Each player met every other player once, with colors drawn by lot. The final crosstable:

Congratulations to Priya K., our 1999 club champion, undefeated at 4½ out of 5. Priya joined the club only two years ago and has improved faster than anyone I've seen. Her draw with Walt in the second round, a long rook ending that went past the library's closing time and was adjourned and finished the following week, decided the title in the end. Walt, last year's champion, was gracious about it and has already asked for the pairing in 2000.

A word about Sam T., who is fourteen and was playing in his first championship. Half a point doesn't sound like much, but that half point was a draw against Ed, who has been playing since before Sam's parents were born, and Sam earned it by finding the only defense in a position Ed and I both thought was lost. He'll be trouble for all of us in a couple of years.

As for my own result: I finished fourth, beat the people I was supposed to beat, and lost to the people I was supposed to lose to. The secretary's lot. My game against Walt had a nice moment around move 20 that I'll put up here once I'm sure it was actually nice and not just lucky.

Set these up on a real board; it's much better than trying to see them in your head, and you'll remember the patterns. Squares are named the usual way: files a through h from White's left, ranks 1 through 8 from White's side. White's king starts on e1, Black's on e8. The solutions are at the bottom of this section, so don't scroll too fast.

Puzzle 1 — The back-rank mate. White to play and mate in one.
White: King on g1, Rook on e1, pawns on f2, g2 and h2.
Black: King on g8, Rook on b2, pawns on f7, g7 and h7.
Notice that Black is threatening to play his rook to b1 and deliver exactly this mate against White. But it is White's move. The three pawns in front of each king are a fence, and a fence works both ways.

Puzzle 2 — The rook "ladder." White to play and mate in two.
White: King on g1, Rook on a6, Rook on h1.
Black: King on d7, and nothing else.
The black king is on the seventh rank. One rook already takes away the sixth rank from him. Think of the two rooks as the rungs of a ladder that push the king to the edge of the board, one rank at a time. Which rook checks first, and from where?

Puzzle 3 — The oldest trap in the book. White to play and mate in one.
Set up the starting position and play these moves: 1. e4 e5  2. Bc4 Nc6  3. Qh5 Nf6.
Black's last move was a mistake, and it's a mistake nearly every beginner makes once. Find White's mate, and then never fall for it again.

Solutions.
1. 1. Re8 is checkmate. The rook checks along the back rank; the king cannot go to f8 or h8 because the rook covers the whole rank, and his own pawns block f7, g7 and h7. Black's rook on b2 cannot capture on e8 or get in the way. (Remember this pattern: when your opponent's back rank is fenced in by his own pawns and no piece guards it, a rook or queen landing there is often the end of the game. Make a little "luft" — move a pawn in front of your king one square — when you sense it coming against you.)
2. 1. Rh7+ is the first rung. The king cannot go down to the sixth rank (the a6 rook covers it) and he cannot stay on the seventh, so he must go to the eighth rank: c8, d8 or e8. Then 2. Ra8 is checkmate: the a6 rook slides up to the eighth rank to give check, the king cannot come back to the seventh because the h7 rook covers it, and he cannot slide along the eighth rank because the a8 rook covers all of it. Note that 1. Ra7+ instead would not work, because it lets the king escape down to the sixth rank. The rook that is already holding a rank should stay put; the other one does the checking.
3. 4. Qxf7 is checkmate, the "Scholar's Mate." The queen takes the f7 pawn, protected by the bishop on c4. The black king cannot capture her, and he has nowhere to go: his own queen, bishop and pawns fill the squares around him. The lesson is not "play for this trick" (a good opponent will simply defend f7 and your queen will get chased around losing time); the lesson is that the f7 and f2 squares are the weakest points on the board in the opening, guarded only by the king, and you should watch them.

Every strong player at our club will tell you something slightly different, but all of them will agree with these. They are not rules so much as good habits, and you can break them once you understand why they exist.

1. Control the center. The four squares in the middle of the board (d4, e4, d5, e5) are where the action is. Pieces there reach more of the board. Put a pawn or two in the center early and aim your pieces at it.
2. Develop your pieces, and knights before bishops. Get your knights and bishops off the back rank in the first several moves, one move each, and don't move the same piece twice before the others are out. Knights usually go first because their best squares (f3 and c3 for White, f6 and c6 for Black) are obvious, while where a bishop belongs often depends on what your opponent does.
3. Castle early. Usually by move ten. It tucks the king away behind pawns and brings a rook toward the center in one move. Most beginners' losses come from a king that is still standing in the middle of the board when the fighting starts.
4. Don't bring the queen out too early. See Puzzle 3. She is your strongest piece and the easiest to chase; every move you spend rescuing her is a move your opponent spends developing.
5. Before every move, ask what your opponent's last move threatens. Not what you want to do; what they want to do. Then move.
6. Look for checks, captures and threats — yours and theirs — before anything quiet.
7. Write your games down and play through them afterward, ideally with someone stronger. A lost game you understand is worth more than a won game you don't. This is what Monday nights are for.
8. Play slowly. Blitz is fun, but you learn by thinking.

Several of our members have been following, and some have been voting in, the game Garry Kasparov has been playing since June against "the World" on the MSN Gaming Zone. Kasparov has White; the other side is anyone with an Internet connection, voting on each move, with a panel of young strong players recommending candidate moves and the move with the most votes being played. It is a Sicilian, and it has turned into a far more serious game than I think anyone expected; the World's play has been remarkably good, and as I type this in late September it is still going, with the ending in the balance.

We print out the position every Monday and put it on the board in the corner, and it has caused more argument than any game in the club's history. Walt says the World is lost. Priya says Walt is wrong. Sam has been casting his vote every day and takes it personally. Whatever happens, it has been a marvelous thing to watch a world champion play, in public, with his reasoning on display, against thousands of people at once. We'll put the final result here when there is one.

Come on a Monday. That's it. Your first few visits are free; if you decide to stay, annual dues are $10 (students and seniors $5), which pays for the sets, the clocks, the score sheets and the coffee, and makes you eligible for the ladder and the championship. We have members from twelve years old to eighty-one, and about a third of them didn't know how the knight moved when they first walked in.

If you'd like to ask something first, or you'd like to be added to the list for the monthly postcard with the schedule, send me a note at [email protected]. I check it a couple of times a week; I'm a secretary, not a switchboard.

We also welcome visitors from other clubs who are passing through. Bring a set and a story.