Tornelo is building more and more features. There are now variants that can be played including Chess 960, or Fischerandom Chess. Our regulars at Chess @ 4 were the first to try this out, and they will be playing some Chess960 events throughout the rest of the term. If anyone wants to join them, then simply join the Chess @ 4 events to do so.

The next Chess960 tournament will be held at 4:00pm tomorrow, Thursday 19th November and all the games will start from the same starting position.

This position was one of the starting positions during the Champions Showdown in St Louis USA with Carlsen, Caruana etc. You can see there games here.

Tornelo has proved to be a fresh new platform for chess tournaments to be held on this year. Lots of chess organisations from all over the World have signed up to host their events on Tornelo, including the International Chess Federation, FIDE. 

The Melbourne Chess Club, Australia's oldest chess club, have moved to online events. Their weekly Allegro events can be joined every Saturday afternoon, and they hosted their first long-play tournament last weekend. The Hjorth Open and Invitational was an excellent event with two Grandmasters amongst the field. Even I played! My first online chess tournament, where I wasn't the arbiter. It did feel different to over the board chess which I think I still prefer, but it was still a great experience that I enjoyed. Players used Tornelo for their games, and Zoom was used to communicate between players and organisers/arbiters. This is called a "hybrid chess tournament system" To ensure fair play, everyone had to use a webcam to show their face and surroundings, and also had to share their computer screen with no other programs visible. This will be usual practice for online tournaments in the future.

There were some great performances. The invitational event was won by English Grandmaster, Daniel Fernandez while the Open event was won by Kartavya Anadkat with a great score of 7.5/9. Some regular players from Chess @ 4 and Chess @ Noon took part with good performances by Rheyansh Annapureddy, Ehsaas Waadhwa, Adeeb Keshtiar, Kavin Kumar and Emma Kwok. I'm sure these players all gained a lot of experience and learned some valuable chess tournament lessons.

Here's an endgame from one of my games. Opposite coloured bishop endings are very difficult to win, but White has a chance here. What is White's best move and plan in this position?

​Find the answer here.