Chess Games

This site contains chess games from the Vassar-Chadwick club, as well as games from other tournaments that were played by members of the club.

The output was generated using Chessbase 10, and the game moves display in a graphical board as well as in algebraic notation. Each page also has a link to download all the games on that page in PGN format. There are many free utilities that allow you to view PGN chess games (and also generate your own).

Tournament Name	Format/Time Control	Date	Number of Games
June Swiss	6 round Swiss G30	June2010	7
May Swiss	4 round Swiss G40	May2010	5
Memorial	4 round Swiss G45	Apr2010	6
Dutchess County Championship	5 round Swiss G90	Mar2010	11
US Amateur Team East (Parsippany NJ)	6 round team Swiss 40/2, SD1	Feb2010	10
November Swiss	4 round Swiss G30	Nov2009	4
Fall Quads	Quad G60	Oct2009	3
May Swiss	4 round Swiss G30	May2009	7
Memorial	4 round Swiss G50	Apr2009	8
Dutchess County Championship	5 round Swiss G90	Mar2009	12
US Amateur Team East (Parsippany NJ)	6 round team Swiss 40/2, SD1	Feb2009	7

Explanation of Tournament Formats (follow the links for more detailed information)

Swiss: Players are initially paired by rating (or randomly), and in subsequent rounds winner plays winner, and loser plays loser.
Round-Robin: Everyone plays everyone else once. Usually seen when using rapid time controls.
Quad: Players are grouped into 4s (usually by rating), and each group acts like a Round-Robin.
Double Quad: Same as a Quad, except that each player plays two games against the other members of the group.

Explanation of Time Control

Gy: Each player is given y minutes for the entire game
x/y: Each player must play x number of moves within y hours/minutes. There can be multiple times specified like this for a single game (although this is not often seen today, especially with the addition of delay - see below)
SD/y: Once last time control is reached, y hours/minutes are alloted to each player to finish the game

Additional Time information: It is common nowadays for players to utilize digital clocks. This allows for specialized features, such as adding time after each move (increment), or (more usually) not starting the timer for x seconds before each move (simple delay). It is common practice (although not necessarily coded in the rules) to subtract x minutes from the time control when using x seconds delay. For instance, if the tournament is 40/2, SD30 (40 moves in 2 hours, with sudden-death time of 30 minutes), those using delay will set their clocks to allow for 1:55 with a 5 second delay. While it may seem more complicated, allowing delay is a good way to prevent losing on time or having to request judgement on draws in certain positions. Even if a player has 1 second remaining, he is guaranteed 5 "free" seconds in order to move - that's not much, but what used to result in losing a drawn position now allows someone to quickly shuffle back and forth until an objective measurement is reached (rather than relying on the subjective judgement of a tournament director). Of course a game can be drawn any time both players agree...but sometimes tournament conditions and the drive to win (or just not lose rating points - see below) leads to what some may term 'gamesmanship' or simply using the rules to one's utmost benefit. It is important to understand those rules, even if you rarely have to use (or defend yourself against) them.

Explanation of Ratings

Some chess organizations implement a rating service. This provides a way to measure the relative ability of the members of that organization, for the purposes of tournament pairing, determining awards and title distinctions, or just plain ego boost. The math used to determine a chess rating is somewhat involved and has evolved over time to adjust for rating inflation/deflation. A rating is only relevant when comparing to another rating from the same organization (or pool of players) - if someone has a USCF rating of 1500 and their opponent has a TRCF (I just made that up) rating of 2100, you can't know based on that who is more likely to win. Of course if enough players are members of both organizations, some approximate conversions can be made.
Based on analysis of the USCF rating distribution, a person with a rating of 1500 would be in the top 25% of all players. However, this is skewed by a large pool of new scholastic players. With a more refined distribution that only considers ratings >= 1000 (a reasonable cutoff to separate novices from beginning but serious tournament players), 1500 would be around the 50th percentile - an average tournament player.

Time control and ratings, while two separate parts of tournament chess, are related through policy. In the USCF, a player has two independent over-the-board (OTB) ratings, Regular and Quick. Any game with a time control less than G30 is rated Quick, any game with a time control between G30 and G60 (inclusive) will be rated under both, and any game with a time control greater than G60 will be Regular rated only. Any game with a time control less than G5 (ie, Bullet) is not rated. The intent with having two ratings is to increase participation in faster chess (younger players are more attracted to quick time controls, also spectator interest), but not risk a player's hard-earned rating gained from years of playing "real" chess (chess using time controls that allow for full consideration of the position, where skill trumps the ability to move and hit a chess clock in .01 seconds). Of course there are advocates on both sides (quick chess is real vs. anything less than 40/2 is rubbish vs. correspondence chess is the only way to play).

Finally, it should be noted that each chess organization may have their own particular set of rules (above and beyond the basic rules to chess itself). The details provided above are applicable to the United States. The world organization, FIDE (pronounced FEE-DAY), has another set of rules. Most of the time the rules are equivalent, but not always. For example, in the USCF, if one player has less than 5 minutes remaining on his clock neither player is required to continue to keep score. In FIDE, both players are still required to keep score, regardless of time remaining, if there is a 30 second or more per move increment as part of the time control. While it may seem a minor point, this recently caused controversy in the United States Chess Championships, which was operating under FIDE rules (so that it could be rated by them). As if chess isn't complicated enough....