Teaching chess since 1996
Tournaments
We had an exciting tournament with 32 players — yes, that’s eight more than we normally have room for. You can tell that summer’s here and school’s out! The tournament was so much fun. Since it was World Champion Gukesh’s birthday, we all sang Happy Birthday to him. He wasn’t able to come in person, which meant that our champions didn’t get a chance to compete against him to win his world championship. But Piada donated a chocolate chunk cookie to two of our champions from the Under 860 section. The Over 860 section was extremely tough, and we had two players rated above 1900 competing. John Patrick Capocyan won that section with a perfect 3-0 score. Mohnishkirupaa Palani, Carl Yu, and Bo-You Lee tied for second with 2.5 points. In the Below 860 section, we had players rated from 215 to 860 including five who were in their very first tournament! We had four players tie for first: Jacob Goldberg, Sanjiv Santhosh, Andy Zhou, and Ryan Soliman, all with 2.5 points. This may never happen again, but everyone there at the end got a prize.
No promises that we can let so many play in future tournaments at Piada. If you want to be sure you can have a place, be one of the first 24 to sign up.
May is behind us, and we congratulate the top upsets of the month. These players receive a 1-month diamond membership to chess.com if they have a subscription through chess.com.
Also, special praise goes to Carl Yu for drawing a 1981-rated player 360 points higher than he is, and several Unrated players beat high-rated players on Friday.
News
FBCC has released The Beast. This app assists you with your chess training. Click on the Beast for more details.
New Classes starting this summer
Level 7 - Intermediate tactics
This class is for players who have mastered all of the basic tactics: pins, forks, double attacks, discovered attacks, remove the guard, and counting.
Intermediate tactics teaches how to build combinations — a series of forcing moves that end up with a winning tactic.
Level 14 - play against Bobby Fischer
This is maybe the most fun class we offer. Learning objectives:
- Improve your ability to recognize critical positions
- Improve your ability to analyze critical positions
- In a team environment, gain insight on how other players evaluate positions and select moves.
What do other students say about this Level?
USCF 1200-rated player:
These lessons are very helpful. I’ve learned what to watch out for so I don’t make the same calculation errors in the future. And it helps seeing the moves the grandmasters are playing and we can make those same moves — they’re not so hard we can’t find them now that we’re looking for them.
USCF 900-rated player:
I love being in the Level 14 class because it helps me improve my time management. I get to learn threats and sacrifices that can be used against Bobby Fischer’s style of play. One of my favorite parts is hearing other people’s ideas about a position and sharing my own — it’s a great way to grow and improve my chess knowledge. The games we study are outstanding. I’m always amazed at the unexpected things that can happen in a position. It’aalso really fun to solve kinds of mind-blowing puzzlesw and discuss different ideas with people in the class.