WCL Newsletter Vol. II - issue XVI  Friday, April 18, 2008
	In this Issue:  USCF month: CofC finals Titled players challenge you ! Live on WorldChessLive  Tourneys: Join & Win Prizes Highlights WCL : The Community Past issues

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Titled players challenge you ! MasterChallenge(*)(C)(TD): >Congratulations Player for defeating GM Vladimir Too-Strong in the MasterChallenge event. Congratulations Player for this incredible accomplishment :) 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 Tournaments and EVENTS! Under (To)day Events, you find scheduled events, MasterChallenge, Simul, etc. But also the live games that are broadcasted. following, there is "tomorrow events" as far there is no last minute change.  vs is probably the toughest Time  Control for the Masters. So, in most on cases, we go for a  1 1 vs 2 1. Still one more minute for the player!     Let's see the results of the week: Tursday, April 10 | 15:00 EDT  GM Viktor Gavrikov played 17 games and won 17... whate else?  Thursday April 10 | 19:00 EDT GM Dejan Antic 16 wins and 1 loss to YoNoSe. Friday, April 11 | 15:00 EDT IM Branimir Maksimovic  played 17 games, won 13n drew to MaryDawson and lost to Kristof, MaryDawson and Vtopalov. Friday April 11 | 19:00 EDT FM Dragan Drasko  played 2 BanterChess in a row, instead of the weekly TGIF cancelled at the last minute for health reasons,  with the score of 37 wins and only one loss to DGajovic! Saturday, April 12 | 15:00 EDT GM Victor Mikhalevski played 21 games, winning 19, losing to TGRUN and moonlightwizard. Monday, April 14 | 15:00 EDT WGM Anna Zatonskih  17 wins, just perfect.  Monday, April 14 | 19:00 EDT IM Branimir Maksimovic  played 18 games, just lost to DarrellMac2. Wednesday, April 16 | 15:00 EDT GM Daniel Fridman  played a time odds 15 wins, Anzer drew, Goran and Robertbancod won! Wednesday, April 16 | 19:00 EDT GM Yuri Solodovnichenko played 16 games and lost one to Playwaycool! Piece-Odds Sunday, April 13 | 14:00 EDT GM Alex Finkel won 11 games and lost to Marcosdiaz, JeanTrudel, croder. Tuesday, April 15| 19:00 EDT  GM Vitali Golod was there again for his favorite event : Piece-Odds! He stopped after 17 wins...  Of course, only members can play, so become a member! Banter played this week:  During the 25 5 game, the two Masters whisper their thoughts and their plans. Of course, they can't read what their opponent is planning. Always interesting to try to understand how a Master thinks!  When the game finishes, the players review the game together, exploring other lines and analyzing their mistakes. GM Victor Mikhalevski vs GM Yuri Solodovnichenko. Two strong GM for that weekly battle that ended by the victory of... Victor! These games are recorded with their commentaries for a further rebroadcast. You can also do /finger Banterchess to review the games without the comments.  Simul Results  Don't miss the registration! To make sure you'll be warned of the beginning of the registration for the simul, just do "tell simulbot alarm". Beware, that is a toggle command, so, if you send the command twice, that will switch the alarm off.   IM Martha Fierro, played her saturday night fever Simul aganst 8 players. She won 7 out on 8 and lost vs RobertBancode and she reviewed this game.   GM Ronen Har-Zvi, played a Simul against 8 players and won 6 out of 8, drawing the 2 others vs Playwaycool and Brechstange (who woke up in the middle of his german night especially for the event! Ronen choosed the game played vs Shangi to point out the decisive moment of the game. WCL is the only site where Simul are followed by an analysis and comments between the simul giver and  the  audience. Thanks to all the players, Members and Masters, and Congratulations to the Winners. Rules and descriptions of all Titled Events can be found here Events Scheduled This Week (Saturday April 19th, April 27th)  Saturday  15:00 EST MasterChallenge  19:00 EST MasterChallenge IM Miodrag Perunovic IM Martha Fierro  Sunday  14:00 EST Piece-Odds  18:00 EST Battle of the Week IM Goran Vojinovic FM Dragan Drasko vs IM Branimir Maksimovic  Monday  15:00 EST Time-Odds  19:00 EST MasterChallenge GM Victor Mikhalevski GM Yuri Solodovnichenko  Tuesday  15:00 EST MC Pieces-Odds  19:00 EST Simul+Analysis FM Dragan Stamenkovic GM Ronen Har-Zvi  Wednesday  15:00 EST Time-Odds  19:00 EST MasterChallenge IM Sasha Belezky IM Martha Fierro  Thursday  15:00 EST BanterChess  19:00 EST MasterChallenge GM Ronen Har-Zvi vs GM Boris Gulko GM Dejan Antic  Friday  15:00 EST MasterChallenge  19:00 EST MC Pieces-Odds  20:00 EST TGIF IM Branimir Maksimovic GM Larry Christiansen FM Dragan Drasko vs IM Dragan Stamenkovic  Saturday  15:00 EST MasterChallenge  19:00 EST Simul + Analysis GM Viktor Gavrikov IM Martha Fierro  Sunday  14:00 EST Piece-Odds  18:00 EST Battle of the Week IM Goran Vojinovic GM Dejan Antic vs IM Branimir Maksimovic   Live on World Chess Live US State Champion of Champions April is USCF Month on WCL, and we're ready to host the U.S. State  ‘Champion of Champions’ semi-final and final that will see the winner going forward to play in the 2008 Frank K. Berry  U.S. Chess Championship, May 13-21 in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  This unique invitational, organized jointly by WCL and USCF, will see all state champions from as far as Alaska through California to Hawaii, and from Maine through New York to Florida coming together in this innovative online event on April 12, with the top four going forward to contest the knockout finals 18-19 April. Here are the 4 players qualified for the semi-final : For the Western Conference: IM Vinay Bhat (CofC-NorthCalif) with a score of 12.5 out of 14 and IM Enrico Sevillano (CofC-SoCal) with 10.5/14 For the Eastern Conference: IM David Vigorito (CofC-MA) 17/18 ! and IM-elect Ray Robson (CofC-Florida) 13.5/17 To see all the games played type liblist CofC08 but you can also find some of them on the USCF website in the article signed by WGM Jennifer Shahade. Why not join us and give support to your champion? Each round of the finals (semi finals, finals) will be played in two rounds, alternating colors, with a time control of 60 minutes initially plus 3 seconds added per move. If a match ends 1-1, there will be two games with a time control of 5 1 between those two players to determine the winner. Should this tiebreak match also ends 1-1, there will be an 'Armageddon game': White will receive 5 minutes against Black's 4 minutes, no time increments. Black will advance on draw in that game. The responsible WCL tournament director will draw lots in order to determine colors in this Armageddon game. The games in the finals will be USCF "dual" rated. The champions are waiting for you on Saturday April 19, at 15:00 EDT for the Semis and Sunday April 20, at 15:00 EDT for the Final! Take a seat at the ringside and Enjoy! Full details and rules can be found at  US States Champion of Champions   IMPORTANT: World Chess Live (WCL) uses the interface called Dasher. Blitzin WILL NOT WORK so one MUST download Dasher 1.2.2 for World Chess Live. **BLITZIN, OR DASHER, FOR ICC WILL NOT WORK** Download Dasher for WCL and click on "Download Software", left column. XIX Internet Chess Tournament "Ciudad de Dos Hermanas" 2008 is over.  But the Talk-Show goes on : Weekly, IM John Watson Talk Show is broadcasted on ICC Chess.FM. This 60+ minutes feature some chess personality This week (Tue., 15 April), joining IM John Watson on Chess Talk will be ICC Blitz ace Jorge Sammour- Hasbun.  The former Honduras  prodigy, who now lives in the U.S., made a remarkable comeback to the game last year after a long layoff to win the Dos Hermanas online blitz tournament.  Recently, he repeated this remarkable feat by winning Dos Hermanas for the second successive year - despite again being the only untitled player among seven grandmaster in the final.   Jorge, who has four IM-norms but no title (as yet!), also top-scored for new USCL champions Boston Blitz last season, undefeated on 6.5/7 (his only draw being with Hikaru Nakamura) and a 2800 performance. His new project involves teaching chess to kids in schools. This show is FREE and can be displayed by clicking on here Full results and commentaries of Dos Hermanas tournament can be found at Dos Hermanas website Future Events : BOCA RATON  2008 U.S. Senior Open WCL will cover that famous meeting running from April, 28 to May, 3 2008. more details on the website

Highlights

Predict a Move - An Event with PRIZES ! Started  January 1st, PAM (Predict-a-Move) is rolling. Every day at 13:00 EDT, 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 gives 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. PRIZES : Each month the best player will be awarded with a 3 weeks membership extension and the player who has played the most during the month (with a minimun score of 3000 points for the whole month) will get 1 week membership extension! the winner of the best can't be, the same month, also winner of the most and can't be awarded for the best score, twice in a row but he can play for the most then. Here come the names of the top 3 in the PAM played from Thursday, April 10 to Wednesday, April 16:  Thursday  1. Alstone52  3850 pts  2. timm 3575 pts  3. Janos07 3550 pts  Friday  1. Zoraidax 4300 pts  2. timm 4075 pts  3. Alstone52 3725 pts  Saturday  1. ZoranMilenkovic 4575 pts  2. timm 4525 pts  3. Alstone52 4300 pts  Sunday  1. Alstone52 2250 pts  2. timm 2125 pts  3. Zebbile 2025 pts  Monday  1. Alstone52 4175 pts  2. MassimoViti 3750 pts  3. Janos07 3750 pts  Tuesday  1. timm 3850 pts  2. robertbancod 3600 pts  3. Alstone52 3575 pts  Wednesday  1. timm   5000 pts  2. Alstone52 4825 pts  3. Robertbancod 4825 pts  Each day, around 20 persons join this events and kibitz their thoughts via PAM-bot. So Join us and have fun!  In case of tiebreak, the system is very simple, it is the registration order which decides, so, be there at the very beginning!   Dasher - Hints and tips Tournament : Just think Two-Twennyohann 221 is the number! WCL's managers are always ready to run Tournaments if you ask. The best way is to send your resquest in channel 221 : "> Hi, can you organize a 5 0 blitz"  and if others people are waiting a similar tournament, they can say "yes, if you open it, I'll join". The managers are here to answer your wills . Tournaments would work better and filll faster if you kept an eye on this channel. Otherwise, they will open, in order to give you  fun, some tourney without knowing if you are interesting in it so... Instead of waiting the tourney you would like to play: Just ask!! Check also if there is already some tournament running or open to registration, click on >Windows >Acitivities and select the tournament tab :  Here you can see that 4 tournaments are actually in progress. But only the first one, named "Two losses and say Goodbye" is available for joining. You can see that the three others are locked and there is no  to click on and join. From the above, you know for example that the Tournament named "Valley Of The Kings" is in its 3rd round of 5 (3/5), it is a blitz rated (br) with a time control of 3 0 played with the Swiss Style (SW) pairing method. Clicking on the will give you the actual standings, the games in progress, the list of players and more details on tournaments in general. Littleper (channel 225) hosts this tournament. E2 E1 or SW stand for the styles. Ex is a tournament by elimination where x is the maximum of losses you can have before finishing (and losing) the tourney. E2 means you can lose one game but at the second loss you are done! Beware also, if you latejoin, each round missed counts as a loss. SW is for Swiss style where player with  similar scores play each other but max 1 time each. More about the styles. Luton is probably the more flexible one and allows the manager to start with only 6 players. The only thing requested is to have an even number of players, so if  a 7th player join when the manager is about to close the tourney, he will have to reopen it... and wait for one more (or kill a player if nobody is watching at him). The pairings are automatically done by the bots and players with similar scores play each other but they may play more than once and it happens that, in a 5 rounds tourneys, you meet three times the same opponent; thing that doesn't happen in Swiss style. So, we understand, when you join a tourney that you want it to start as soon as possible (thats why the manager will turn it from Swiss to Luton) but may be is it better to wait few more minutes and start with Swiss style ? well... up to you !   Make sure you have a version 1.2.2 or above. Click on the Help in menu bar and select About Dasher. It will display your actual version and if it does show you the 1.2.2 you have to download here. Lucky you!  You just downloaded the latest Dasher and, Included in this version, a link to the multi-title winning JUNIOR engine that you can buy much cheaper than anywhere else and integrate in Dasher to examine, analyze your games and, use as a tool to help improve your game!     We are here to help you and let you have fun playing chess!    : 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"  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: Games of the day / Videos : they are available for members only (so join us !) with your WCL handle and password.  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. There is an alternative interface to Dasher for people who chosed Mac or Linux, its called Sonia. 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. What time is it ? : On WCL, the events refers to the Server Time EDT (New-York time), that is GMT-4 or PST+3. To check the Server Time (and see if your didn't forget to have lunch) you can type /Date in main tab and see the server time.   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.

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