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If you want to see your name in the NewsLetter, it is VERY easy : just play the Events and win!

Played this week Some results of the week   Keep an on the scheduled Events, connect in time, then, jump in!  On Dasher, click in menu bar - Window - Activities then select the Events tab. That is where you find most of the info about... guess what... EVENTS ! Under (To)day Events, you find scheduled events, MasterChallenge, Simul, etc. But also the live games that are broadcasted. Under them are the "tomorrow events" as far there is no last minute change. But above the Today Events, there is a line name "scheduled events with titled players this week" and it opens a webpage.  vs is becoming the usual time control for Master Challenge but, for people over 2000, the time control is 1 0 1 0.   So, for players who have a provisional rating in bullet, MasterChallenge will take in consideration their rating average in other sections. Masters have more fun to play that way and chances for players to win are greater so... everybody is happy !  Let's see the results of the week:  GM Yuri Solodovnichenko played 21 games. Don't know what philter they poured in his vod... I mean coffee, but Yuri went down 3 times : Mary Dawson x 2 and Lena did it. So Yuri, focus on the squares not on your opponent!  IM Irina Krush didn't want me to put a name in this list, so she just won her 18 games as a warm up for the TGIF, on January 4th  IM Dragan Stamenkovic's results : 18 Wins and 2 MaryDawson.  GM Victor Mikhalevski woke up a bit late on that january 6th and was not really prepared to play. Remember that, when you play a MasterChallenge at 19:00 EST, it's already 2:00 AM in Israel. That may explain his not so good result for this Event but we know Victor for a long time now and he is worth much more than what the result shows: 22 games played, 16wins, 1draw kratzand 5 losses to shona, alieth, MaryDawson, Lena, XPshadow.  GM Yuri Solodovnichenko (try to write his name without typo!) enjoyed to play his 23 games 2 0 1 0, thinking, as most of us it's make the game more interesting.  GM Larry Christiansen played his first Pieces-Odds on WCL (he uses to play it on ICC) 16 wins and 2 draws vs shona.  GM Yuri Solodovnichenko played 21 games, 1 draw : BillBodhisattva and 2 losses Shona and Nikolasosic.  GM Larry Christiansen played his Simul vs 15 boards. Only 15? Yes! We noticed that too many players waited the Simul to start before latejoining and, on our side, we were waiting they join before starting. We encourage you to join as soon as the registration starts or you take the risk to stay outside. When we see more people knocking at the door, be sure we open it larger but, for now Don't Wait The Last Moment To Join! Rules and descriptions of all Titled Events can be find here

2008 on WCL  A new way to play MasterChallenge... only for members, so join us. MasterChallenge played as Piece-odds or Time-odds appear to meet a great success, for the members as well as for the Masters! Pieces odds is the first we offer you to play. Determined by your rating, the master will suffer the handicap of a piece. It looks like some of you, ir order to increase their chances, adjust their rating to play in the best time control. Speedtrap calls that "sandbagging" and wants to punish the suspect but I dealt with him, arguing that was not exactly cheating but just, may be a coincidence. Also true for people who have no rating in these sections and play with a rating at 1400P by default. So, we will take in count the average ratings of the player and/or will move the rating limits. The 2000 rating limit one day, may change from 1950 to 2050 an other day. That's my deal with Speedy, I hope you agree with it. Speedy, on his side, likes it!  An other thing about ratings in pieces-odds. When you join, your bullet rating is taken in count but, since pieces-odds is a wild-game, your rating in wild is displayed on the board, don't worry about it, the position is set up according to your bullet rating. Banter played this week: IM Goran Vojinovic vs FM Dragan Drasko 1 - 0 GM Boris Gulko vs IM Irina Krush 0 - 1 IM Miodrag Perunovic vs IM Irina Krush 0 - 1 These games have been recorded with the player's comments and can be rebroadcasted on demand. TGIF This Friday evening, two great blitzers were on the field for the weekly series of 3 0: IM Irina Krush vs GM Yuri Solodovnichenko with a score of 8-4 in favor or Irina who is warming up for Corus. Thanks to both players for that event regarded as a one of the most popular show between titled players on WCL. She is not watching her birthday cake (too much candles on it! tsss...) nevertheless we wish her an happy birthday (with few days late...)

Events Scheduled This Week (Monday Jan. 14, Jan. 20)
Saturday	15:00 EST MasterChallenge  20:00 EST Simul + Audio	GM Vitali Golod  IM Martha Fierro
Sunday	14:00 EST MasterChallenge  20:00 EST Battle of the Week	GM Victor Mikhalevski  IM Goran Vojinovic vs  IM Gergely Szabo
Monday	15:00 EST BanterChess  19:00 EST MasterChallenge	WGM Anna Zatonskih vs   GM Alex Finkel  FM Dragan Drasko
Tuesday	15:00 EST MC Pieces-odds !  19:00 EST Simul	IM Miodrag Perunovic  GM Ronen Har-Zvi
Wednesday	15:00 EST MasterChallenge  19:00 EST Simul + Audio	GM Daniel Fridman  GM Victor Mikhalevski
Thursday	15:00 EST MasterChallenge  19:00 EST BanterChess	WGM Anna Zatonskih   IM Goran Vojinovic vs  IM Miodrag Perunovic
Friday	15:00 EST Lecture  19:00 EST MasterChallenge  20:00 EST TGIF	IM Gergely Szabo  GM Vitali Golod  IM Dragan Stamenkovic vs  IM Goran Vojinovic
Saturday	15:00 EST MC Time-Odds  20:00 EST Simul + Audio	GM Viktor Gavrikov  IM Martha Fierro
Sunday	14:00 EST MasterChallenge  20:00 EST Battle of the Week	IM Branimir Maksimovic  GM Boris Gulko vs  GM Ronen Har-Zvi

Live on World Chess Live - Corus

The organizing committee of the Corus Chess Tournament has decided to considerably tighten up the regulations for a press accreditation during the 2008 event. But they forgot about accreditations for parrots... So, WCL will be in, and our flying spy will provide us pics of the strongest GrandMasters battling out for the title.  WCL's Relay team will provide you the live coverage of the games, with the comments of GrandMasters on Chess.FM. You can visit the website.

 Of course, we'll keep our eyes wide open on the 3 main GM's Group :

Good luck to IM Irina Krush, our popular SitePro in this tourney!
But do not forget the Participants Honorary Group:
GM Viktor Kortchnoi SUI 2611, GM Jan Timman NED 2559, GM Ljubomir Ljubojevic SRB 2550, GM Lajos Portisch HUN 2530.
A Great great show is coming up! Be a WCL member to get all benefits of the broadcast!

Highlights

Volunteer Event  Many thanks again to FM Michael Baron who jumped in a unexpected MasterChallenge. He is well known on WCL since he spend lot ot time in Lobby channel (250) making him a popular site titled player. As already mentionned last week, he won his 15 games. Predict a Move Started since January 1st, PAM (Predict-a-Move) is rolling. Every day at 13:00 EST, you can join the line just type "tell PAM-bot join". The rule is simple. A game played by 2 masters is chosen in a database and the members have to guess what is the move that has been played by white as well as black. Any guess within the 30 first seconds give you 25 points. The right guess gives 75 points, so, the right guess found in less than 30 seconds means 100 points. Of course, it is not allowed to search the game in a database in order to guess(?) the move. We hope you understand that cheating is just detrimental. You can join, leave and come back without losing your points. Here come the names of the top 3 in the PAM played from Thursday, January 3rd to Wednesday, January 9th:  Thursday  1. AleshBenko 3300 pts  2. teve15 3200 pts  3. Zoraidax 3150 pts  Friday  1. Alstone52 3950 pts  2. Janos07 3500 pts  3. Zoraidax 3475 pts  Saturday  1. Alstone52 4275 pts  2. BostjanBenko 4250 pts  3. FjCf 3925 pts  Sunday  1. Alstone52 3650 pts  2. ChessLover2 3450 pts  3. teve15 3350 pts  Monday  1. timm 3025 pts  2. teve15 2550 pts  3. Janos07 2500 pts  Tuesday  1. teve15 3800 pts  2. ChessLover2 3700 pts  3. Alstone52 3625 pts  Wednesday  1. timm 3850 pts  2. Alstone52 3750 pts  3. ChessLover2 3650 pts  Each day, around 20 persons join this events and kibitz their thoughts via PAM-bot. So Join us and have fun! Games played on Saturday, January 5th, 2008 at 20:00 EST

IM Martha Fierro from Ecuador was already a popular SitePro but his regular Simul given on every Saturday at 20:00 EST is becoming a not to be missed rendez-vous for all chess players.  As we expected, many people played even if too many wait the simul has begun before joining which is a bit disturbing for the Simulgiver. So we encourage you to join before the simul starts, otherwise your time control decreases.  By the way, if the Simul is full, people who were waiting the last moment won't be able to play... January 5th, was the first Simul of the year played by IM Martha Fierro. Here are the results : 15 players, the winners are TommyLooney, SebastienVelon and jps7. Congrats to all. Thank you too and better luck next time for those who are not in the list As usual, TWO players had the pleasure to have their game analysed in AUDIO lecture by IM Martha Fierro :TommyLooney and Coolbreis. Find below a preview of a game analysed last week!

Click here for a preview : You can also visit IM Martha Fierro Website

WCL : The Community

We need you ! As already said above, WCL is growing ! We need Helpers, we need more Tournament managers, so if you like chess and if you enjoy to help people to play chess and give them fun in playing in the best conditions, apply for Helper and/or for Tournament Manager. Go in Event Tab of the Activities Window and, at the bottom, you'll find the forms to fill. Don't forget that thing : if you are friendly with people, people will be friendly with you (well... almost !) You can also click on "I want to become a Helper" or on "I want to be a Tournament Manager"

Some changes in the Team, Carla, that some of you knew from WCN, is now the Assistant Head Admin. We are not allowed to display her picture because WCL intends to be a familial site and wants to keep children away of horrors. Even when horror meets reality. But for anyone able to make 10 new members join WCL, we may reconsider this.  Feel free to share your opinion and your wishes. We want to know what kind of event you like, in tourneys, in event vs titled players. We also need to know what is the best hour for you (of course, regarding where you live in the world) and how much time you can spend on WCL for an event. You can find the list of scheduled events, tourneys and broadcast of the coming week in the event window .   Well, we need to know who you are and where you are from in order to schedule the right events at the right time. Questions and some answers: Problembot : is actually unavailable. Hope it will be fixed soon. Meanwhile, you can practice with Traininbot. Mr Spock : And he didn't speak for a while. I agree it's annoying but the problem has been reported and should be soon fixed. Games of the day / Videos : they are available for members only (so join us !) with your WCL and password handle. Mac / Linux :I adore the dasher program but I can't downloaded with my Mac OS X 10.5.1 and sadly I only play with it in my laptop. Wake up, the world change fast. Right! The world changes, that's why there is an alternative interface to Dasher for people who chosed Mac or Linux, its called Sonia. She has blue eyes and red hair and... oops sorry, I am confusing with an other "Sonia". The first one allows you to play Chess and join the WCL community, just click the link. The other one... well... Time Control : Set up a game with time control like 40 moves in 60 minutes + extra time like on an OTB is possible when the game is in tourney mode, so you may need a Admin Tournament Manager to do it.

Two important addresses : If you have any suggestions, ideas or questions, feel free to contact us. We will give you a personal answer or publish it in this part if many of you are concerned by a topic. We collect also infos regarding members of WCL. If you have played a tourney OTB, if your club organizes an event or anything else, we can mention it. Some of you may have questions relatives to login, lost password, membership then contact support. We answer as soon we receive your mail.