Hello and welcome to Blitz'n'Pieces, EUCC's newsletter. In this issue you will find information about all the activities of the club as well as other chess news and some puzzles to solve. Without any further ado ...
THE social event of the year, the pub crawl, occurs this Saturday evening. Beginning at 7.30pm at The Malt Shovel (it's on Cockburn Street, which meets the Royal Mile very close to the junction of North Bridge and South Bridge), we will proceed on for a very high-brow evening of chat and drinking chess.
One thing that is worth mentioning is the EUCC drinking "norms". Rather in the style of how players attain IM and GM titles, the EUCC awards IM and GM drinking titles. To gain such an award, the applicant must first obtain three norms from separate club social events. The IM norm is equivalent to 7½ pints and the GM norm 11½ pints. Last year, special norms for women were introduced, with a women's IM norm being 5 pints. Note that extra points may be awarded for participation in a Karaoke!
The club runs an annual competition for its members, with small prizes available for the winners. This year the cost of entry was included in the membership fee, so all members may participate. It will run in the second term, after christmas, and B'n'P is told that this year it will be a five-round Swiss-style tournament. More details as we have them.
We have two teams entered in the local Lothians chess league, one in the first division and one in the second. If you wish to play for either team, please contact the team captain concerned.
If you are an ungraded player, you will need to play at least eight games against graded players to obtain a grading. The simplest way to ensure you manage this in one season is to play at a couple of chess congresses. Sadly, we know of no such congresses in the near future, but do watch this space. Anyway onto the teams themselves ...
The First Team: The first team started the year with a fine performance against Wandering Dragons 2, crushing them by 4½-½, with one game adjourned.The next team outing is against Pentland Hills on Tuesday 17th November.
The first team captain is Peter Goldsack, the joint President, tel: 667 1224.
The Second Team: After last year's fiasco, the second team has begun well this year, with two fine wins. They won 3½-2½ away to Corstorphine 1 and by the same margin at home to Civil Service 2. The schedule of matches for the rest of this term is:
Tuesday 17th November:- Musselburgh (A)
Tuesday 24th November:- Edinburgh West 3 (H)
Tuesday 15th December:- Bankton (A)
The Second Team captain is Deniz Ogretir, tel: 229 6068.
It is a tradition of B'n'P to print classic blunders from the games of club members. There has been a pathetic lack of such blunders in the last couple of years, so please make amends and admit to them, this year. If we obtain enough, then at the end of the year, the editors will award a small prize to the best (worst!) blunder!
In the past, B'n'P has been mainly a newsletter just about EUCC. However this year with the arrival of a new editor, Steven Rix, and a new text format (TeX) this will change. The ability to stick symbols like K or N at random points in articles will be particularly relished (But sadly not in this WWW version - Ed.). We hope to include more news from the chess world generally and some puzzles to set you thinking. If you wish to write for the magazine or have any comments, please contact Steven Rix (tel: 557 9236 or network [650] 8565, email: steven@chemeng.ed) or John Thompson (tel: 664 9575 or network [650] 5655, email: jst@ee.ed).
As a taster of things to come, Steve has produced a summary of the decisive games from the recent Fischer-Spassky match, annotated by a series of suitably banal comments (with apologies to Raymond Keene, O.B.E.). A printout of all the games from this match is also available, but we feel obliged to charge 20p per copy for this, to cover photocopying costs.