Saturday, October 25, 2008

Scholastic results and Scheduling

Today was our first Orland Scholastic of the year, and we drew 42 players, which is about a 50% increase over last years October event. We have added a rated section which was dominated by wunderkind William Radak. William has been rocketing up the rating list and should be near 1600 now putting him near the top of his age group in the country, not bad for a second grader. Last week Shiva Maharaj dubbed him the "Harry Potter of chess" for his more than passing resemblance to the young Potter as well is his prowess on the board. The title drew a nice grin of approval and a high five from the young man.

Coming up next is the Illinois All Grade championships coming up on November 8th. So far registration has been a little slower than expected at about 240 right now, but we are still projecting that we break 400 for the event.

Glenn

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Allan Hsu is a lowlife

Been away from blogging for a while now, and the scholastic chess schedule is now in full swing. Unfortunately, it seems as though despite there being fewer tournaments, the turnout among the players has actually decreased. Maybe that will be a column for another day.

We are also in week 9 of the US chess league season, where our Chicago Blaze is 4-4 playing against the Arizona Scorpions in a match that has significant playoff ramifications. A win puts our destiny in our own hands and even gives us a chance at the #2 seed, a draw and week 10 becomes a must win game. I will probably blog again after the match.

Anyways, lets get to the title of the post. Back in the wild west days of the internet, cybersquatting was a practice that was common and even lucrative. The idea was that you either vulture a domain name when it expired, or beat a person or a company to getting a website at what their natural name is. Apparently this practice is still common. Several years ago the Seattle Chess Foundation (aka the AF4C) had their site taken and turned into a porn site. Allan Hsu purchased the Illinois Chess Association's http://www.ilchess.org/ address, and is holding it for ransom for $3000. To do this to a non-for-profit group is despicable. If you would like to tell Allan what you think of his doing this, you can contact him at allan_hsu@hotmail.com
To get to the real ICA website, please go to http://www.il-chess.org/

Glenn