Weekly Chess Puzzle

Here is this week's puzzle:


White to move and mate in 5. Can you spot the winning moves? If so, leave a comment on the blog explaining your solution.

Ohio University Chess Club

The Ohio University Chess Club will be meeting next Tuesday, June 30th at 6:00 PM in the Physics Department common room (#254) of the Clippinger Laboratories building.

If anyone is interested in making the trip to Athens on Tuesday evening, please e-mail me so we can arrange a car pool.

Free Rybka Chess Engine

From Zarkon Fischer's Free Chess Programs site:

A promotional version of Peshk@, the new ChessOK interface for its training courses, has been made available on the Rybka Forum. Interestingly (and I'm not sure how long this will last), the software includes Rybka 2.3.2a, which is some 30 Elo points stronger than Rybka 2.2n2, and so, for now at least, is the strongest free chess engine!

If you currently use the free 2.2n2 version of Rybka for analysis, you might want to consider downloading Peshk@ to get this later version. You may have to do a little searching to find it, but the name of the file is Rybka v2.3.2a.w32.exe. Peshk@ looks like an interesting program for training, although I haven't had much time to check it out.

Tournament Update

The 17th Annual Parkersburg Homecoming Chess Tournament will be held on Sunday, August 23rd at the Parkersburg Municipal Building, 2nd & Market Streets, Parkersburg, WV. This will be a four-round Swiss system event with a time control of G/60. There will be both rated and unrated sections. For more information, visit the event page on the WVCA website.

The 71st Annual West Virginia State Chess Championship will be held from Saturday, September 5th through Monday, September 7th at the Benedum Civic Center, 164 W. Main St., Bridgeport, WV. This will be a six-round Swiss system event with a time control of 35/90 SD/60. Quick (G/10) and Blitz (G/5) tournaments will also be held after Round 2 at the Microtel Inn. For more information, visit the event page on the WVCA website.

The Notre Dame High School Fall Chess Tournament will be held on Saturday, September 26th at Notre Dame High Scool in Clarksburg, WV. This will be a four-round Swiss system scholastic event. Time controls for the High School section are G/45 and for the Elementary section are G/30. There is also an Unrated section with no time controls. For more information, visit the event page on the WVSCA website.

The 11th Mountaineer Open is tentatively scheduled for Saturday, October 10th at the Morgantown Chess Club, 100 Cobun Ave., Morgantown WV. This will be a four-round Swiss system event with a time control of G/75. There will be both Open and Reserve (under 1800) sections. In the event of six or fewer players registering for either section, the sections will be combined. For more information, visit the event page on the Morgantown Chess Club website.

Review: Glaurung Chess for iPhone & iPod Touch

This is the first in a series of reviews of chess applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The touch screen on these devices is a great interface that really works well for chess. There are a number of chess programs available in the App Store, but today I'm reviewing one of the better options: Glaurung Chess by Tord Romstad.

Glaurung Chess is a port of an open-source chess engine for the Mac. The engine is very strong (about 2700 ELO) and aggressive. Glaurung has most of the features you would expect from a commercial chess package, including analysis, an opening book tree, the ability to setup positions, and the ability to save & e-mail games as Portable Game Notation (PGN) files. This last feature is especially useful. I recently used Glaurung at a chess tournament to record my notation in-between rounds. When I got home, I simply had to e-mail the PGN file to myself to import it into my PC's chess database.



Graphically, Glaurung is a bit plain. It features two piece sets and five board colors. The menu options, while functional, can be a bit confusing to navigate. For example, under the 'Game' menu is an option called 'Level/Game Mode' where you set the players and time control. However, the actual level of computer playing strength is controlled under the 'Options' menu. Glaurung supports both the 'tap-drag' and 'tap-tap' methods of moving pieces, so you can enter moves quite easily.

The best thing about Glaurung is the price. As open-source software, it is available completely free of charge. Other applications with similar features cost $4.99 or more. Given Glaurung's excellent price point, there's no reason not to get this app.

PROS

Strong engine
Analysis
Opening book tree
Ability to setup positions
Ability to save games as PGNs
Free!

CONS

Mediocre graphics
Confusing menus

Overall Rating: 4/5

Weekly Chess Puzzle

I've decided to run a series of weekly chess puzzles. I'll attempt to post problems that are more involved than the daily Shredder puzzles. If you see the solution, leave a comment on the blog explaining your reasoning.


White to move and mate in 5. Can you spot the winning move?

Chess in the Park Update

Our "Chess in the Park" event went very well yesterday! I'd like to thank everyone who was able to come out. Our club had a good time challenging the Athens players, and we are looking forward to more opportunities to work together.

Pictures from the event have been posted in our photo gallery.

Chess in the Park

The Mid-Ohio Valley Chess Club will be meeting this Saturday, July 20th to play some chess and enjoy the Mid-Ohio Valley Multi-Cultural Festival. We will meet at noon by the band shell, find a table, and play until 3 PM. Hope to see you there!

New Athens Chess Organization

A new chess organization, the Chess Association for Training, Tactics and Analysis (CATTA) is being formed in Athens, OH. For more information, please see this article from The Post.

Also, check out this interesting article about CATTA co-founder Rod Gorby's work to create software that musically annotates chess games.