This week sees the Victorian Junior Interschool Finals for chess over different sections. Today was the Junior Primary event, a tournament for players of Grade 3 or below. It was a fiercely competitive event with only 4 points splitting the top 6 schools! The lead changed lots of times throughout the event, but in the end the winners were Doncaster Gardens Primary School!

The top scorer of the day was Glendal Primary's Deethya Sai Katakam who scored an amazing 9/9. Deethya played very solidly, and once she was ahead in material, she finished the games off fairly easily. There were some big fights for her.
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Deethya is White and has just played b4 attacking Black's bishop. This bishop doesn't have many safe squares, so see if you can save it. You can see if Black managed to save their bishop, and check your own ideas here. 

State Finals week continues tomorrow with the Primary Division followed by Secondary events on Wednesday and Thursday, and a Girls Only tournament on Friday. These are shaping up to be great tournaments. There are already close to 200 players in tomorrow's Primary finals!

Chess @ 4 is a series of tournaments that Kids Unlimited have been running on the Tornelo platform since April when Australia went into lockdown making online chess the only way to keep in practice. Since the start I've run most of the tournaments, and seen thousands of games. I've seen lots of regular checkmates, tactics, and endgames, some interesting strategies, and some unusual ideas. But this week I saw one of the most unusual positions of all!

This was the final position in a game this week with Michael Iurovetski playing White. It's an incredible checkmate delivered by the knight on h5, which is already an unusual type of mate. But there are another two knights also on the h-file! Remember, knights don't like the edge of the board, they prefer the centre. So do most of the other pieces, but every piece (except Black's king) is sat on an edge of the board. If it was just a couple of pieces, I could understand, but I'm not sure I've seen a position where so many pieces were on an edge, eight pieces in total if White's king isn't included!
​White has obviously built a big lead in material and you can see how here.

We have come to the start of term 4 in Victoria. It really doesn't feel like we've had most of a year already. This year has been difficult for most of us, but it looks as if Victorian schools will be starting back again soon. And if we can find a "covid-normal" situation, then restrictions may be eased enough for players to return to face to face tournaments. Until then, Kids Unlimited will continue with running tournaments on Tornelo including Chess @ 4 and Chess @ Noon.

During the school holidays we ran the Victorian Youth Championships. These were age group categories with under 7's, under 9's, under 11's and under 15's. The games were played using a slow time control, with the oldest age group having 45 minutes for the game plus a 10 second increment per move. The longest games were taking over one and a half hours!

There are also still a lot of Interschool events coming up, with State Finals in October and the National Finals to follow towards the end of the term.

Here's a position that I saw in an Interschool event this week.

It is Black to move. Neither player could see a way to break through so after moving theirs kings, they agreed to a draw. Can you help to find a win for Black?
​When you've solved it, check your answer here.

Harshad is now very close to the magic 1000 rating. He seems to have a regular set of openings he plays, is quite strong at spotting tactics, and plays endgames quite well. This means he has a lot of ways that he can win games. First he uses his strategic knowledge of openings, then he finds tricks to win material, and he has technique to finish games off. 
​Harshad's favourite opening seems to be the London Opening.

Would you know what to play here? The London Opening has recently been played by Magnus Carlsen. It was considered a safe and sometimes boring opening, but recently there have been a lot of attacking ideas that have been found for White. Harshad shows good attacking technique in this game, opening the h-file to attack Black's king.

I have noticed Harshad plays some interesting tactics including Zwischenzugs. This is an in between move. In this position White has just played 1.b4 and the obvious thing is to move the bishop away, but Harshad plays a move in between the attack/run away sequence. 1..Nd4 attacking a bigger White piece. White now played 2.Qg3. Should the bishop move to safety now? See the answer here!

This endgame is tough, but players need to remember that "rooks belong behind passed pawns". So Black should play 1..Ra2 to get his rook behind White's passed pawn. Instead he played 1..Rf2 meaning to push his own passed h-pawn and a pawn race began!

Black to move in this position. What is best? What should you be trying to do in this ending? What is most important? Find the answers here!
So Harshad has shown that he is a good all round player. What does he need to do to improve? Just keep working on these things and keep playing lots of challenging chess. If he can get his rating to 1000, then he will have a new challenge in the Premier section of Chess @ 4 to test himself.

Ben also started playing in longer time events and adult events. He is an extremely experienced young player. Ben's most interesting aspect is his unusual openings. Last week he opened every game with White by playing 1.b4, a tricky flank attack. And as Black he likes the French 1.e4 e6, and the King's Indian and Benoni type positions where Black allows White to get a big centre, but then will try to attack it later.
​Ben is always trying hard to find the best move in the position and sometimes gets into time trouble in these fast games. Though sometimes he plays some excellent moves.

With little time, most of us would have pushed our pawns with White here. Ben saw a mating pattern and was rewarded when his opponent didn't see it. See the best move here.

Here's a game that Ben won as White, but his opponent had a good tactic here. Black to move, what is the best move? See if you can find a better move than the Black player here.
​And finally I think we should look at one of Ben's games with his favourite 1.b4 opening.

Black needs to remember not to move the dark squared bishop if g7 can be taken. Ben has gained from this a few times recently!

White to move and force mate in 4. Remember, always look for the best move! See the answer and the whole game here.

Neil started playing chess on Tornelo in April with a very low rating which he soon pushed up. He has had a couple of rating drops in that time, but generally he has had a steady rise.
​Neil plays some of the longest games of all regular juniors at our Chess @ 4 tournaments. This means that he is getting a lot of practice at playing endgames, and he seems to do pretty well in that part of the game. The strategy is quite different to earlier in the game. We are thinking about promoting pawns, trying to get our king into the game and being very accurate about whether we are trying to win or draw. Have a look at the positions in this endgame which Neil played last week.

So what do you think the result should be here? It is Black to move. Can Black win? Will Black lose? Should it be a draw? And how should both sides be trying to play? What should be their strategies?

Now it's White to move. White is a pawn down. Is there any way to save the game?

Now it is Black to move. How would you try to win this position? Would it help if I told you there is a forced mate in 5 moves?

Find out the answers to these questions, and see how Neil played the endgame here.

Alexander joined the Tornelo tournament scene at the end of June when his rating was just 253. He has played lots of chess and this week won three of our chess @ 4 Challengers tournaments to finally rise above 800 which means he'll be trying out in the Premier division for the first time. That will be a new challenge for Alexander, and we all wish him good luck.
Alexander is generally a safe player rather than a risk taker. He is good at spotting tactics that win him material, and then he uses the extra material well.

This is a tricky position. It is White to play, what move would you choose? The whole game, including this position, can be found here. The next position is what was possibly the move of the week.

It is White to play. What is the winning move? Check your answer here.

This is definitely the save of the week. First Black is way down on material but still created a mate threat, and then White saved the game with a perpetual. But one thing I noticed was how difficult it is to spot long queen moves, especially when there is little time on your clock. What would you play as White? You can check out the answer and this endgame here.

It's probably everyone's dream to play for their country at their favourite sport. It doesn't matter whether it's cricket, soccer, tennis, netball or chess, the best thing must be knowing you're good enough to represent your country.
Every two years, chess has its own Olympics, a tournament that dates back to the founding of the World Chess Federation, FIDE, in 1924. This year, the tournament couldn't go ahead as planned because of Covid restrictions and world travel bans. So instead, FIDE put the tournament online, and it is being hosted by chess.com. 
Kids Unlimited is very happy to be represented by our coach, Woman Grand Master Julia Ryjanova, and we wish Julia and the rest of the Australian team the very best of luck in their division. You can follow them online from 6:00pm on Friday 14th August

Each week I will be looking at a player from our Chess @ 4 series. This will be the player of the week and it is possible to be Player of the Week more than once! To be considered for this position, all you need to do is score 15 points during the week in the Chess  @ 4 series on Tornelo. Chess @ 4 is a series of 5 round events that run Monday to Friday, starting at 4:00pm. Between the rounds there are interviews with players, analysis of games and positions, and chat about other chess related things.

In our Chess @ 4 events we run 2 divisions. These are divided by ratings, so there is a tournament for players rated above 800 (Premier), and a tournament for players rated 800 or below (Challengers). There are some players who move up from the Challengers to the Premier, and some who move back down to the Challengers from the Premier. There are even some players who bounce back and forward between the 2 events. In the past week, we saw Utku Tanin make the jump from Challengers to Premier, and stay in the top event. Utku's progress has been steadily rising, but with a few setbacks.
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Starting with a rating below 500 Utku improved slowly until our lockdown when he started playing more regularly in our tournaments. You can see from the graph that it has been hard for Utku to hold on to his improvements, and he's had a few dips, but generally he is improving.

In the past week, what I've noticed is that Utku has really strengthened his tactical vision, so even if he gets into tricky positions, he is trying to find tactical tricks to get himself a lead in the game.

White has just played Bb5 pinning Black's knight. Black decided to kick the bishop away by playing 1..a6. Was this a good move? Answer is here.

Utku is Black, and is a pawn down, but he decided to try out one of his favourite tricks, a discovered attack. What do you think Black played here? Answer is here.

Utku is Black and has another discovered attack in mind. Here Black plays 1..Ne7, a crazy looking move as his knight can just be taken. What do you think the idea is behind this move? Answer is here.

Solving tactics is a great way to improve your game, especially when you can then use the tactics in your games to win points or checkmate your opponent. There are some good places to solve chess tactics online. Try either ideachess or chesstempo, as they're probably the best.