Friday, March 12, 2010

The State of Nothingness

Oh, yes! I know how John Summerfield feels. In a letter to the CAWA editor, Mr Summerfield is dismayed at the lack of chess clubs:

I have recently returned to active chess after almost 15 years.

In my first outing, I played in the Xmas Swiss where I scored 0/5. Clearly, that wasn't the best choice of tournament for my return.

I look around for a club, and I am appalled. There are almost no clubs, certainly none near me.

I used to live in a suburb of Melbourne were I could, and did, play at Waverley, Dandenong, Mentone, and none was a long drive from where I lived.

Here, nothing.

What are Western Australian chessplayers doing about it? Nothing. It's almost the end of January, and the CAWA website is full of ... nothing but empty space. Not even a mention of the AGM which I thought was coming up.

Read the whole thing and more in CAWA's February 2010 newsletter to its members.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice news sheet Plenty of activity in WA aparently. What is Summerfield whinging about this time

Michael Baron said...

0/5 - was it wrong choice of tournament or wrong kind of play :)

Anonymous said...

Hello Michael.

I am John Summerfield, now on the CAWA executive.

The ACF maintained my rating was about 1500, where I recalled it was about 1400.

I played four players 1700 and above. At my best, .5 would be a likely score. The fifth opponenet was about my presumed rating, and a likely score in that game would be .5.

By your standards certainly, my play is weak.

However, I always played weekenders in Victoria, and I don't recall meeting such a strong field or scoring 0/5 before.

For my standard of play, even at my best, 0/5 is quite a likely score against such a field. So, wrong tournament.