Sunday and Monday

When the weather is good, the outdoor play at the Parc des Bastions is a great experience. Without any rain and with very pleasant temperatures, we were able to make the best use of the place, playing there until very late in the night both on Sunday and Monday.

Sunday's traditional bughouse on giant boards did not last as long as usual, with all players already exhausted after a few games ; the population of the gathering seems to be aging ! The ping-pong was not very intensive either : now that there are pre-set nets on the three tables of the park, there are really a lot of people playing and it requires patience to get access to a table. Still, we managed some games both on Sunday and Monday.

But the straight bughouse was excellent ! As often, some bypassers took part to the game, so that we were clearly more numerous than when playing the tournament. Unlike the swiss reputation, chess players in Geneva do not seem to like fixed schedules.

As usual, Sunday and Monday are my personal best times, with the organisational work mostly behind, and this time no blocking bug or last-minute change. Ah well, we had forgotten to take the chess sets and clocks with us on Saturday night, but arranging to take them on Sunday morning was no headache.

You were there ? Tell us an anecdote ! Author*
Nathalie24.08.2006, 19:11:50
Playing bug with the big pieces was fun, but still I say premoving there really is unfair...
nabla24.08.2006, 20:43:07
Hehe it can certainly be played without premove, but with 10 minutes instead of 5 !
Talking about time, in your game against schorle, how long did that discussion last, about whether the king and queen should be swapped back ? (the subsequent abort request was finally rejected)
nabla24.08.2006, 20:45:49
FantasticCat played a very strange move when I was his partner, I had already mated and he had only four seconds to gain in an overwhelming position : he tried Qd1-d8 mate although there were two other pieces on the d-file !
It must be said that the limit of the giant boards are not very clear, and that he of course intended to play Q@d8 mate. His opponent Tjeulesbetes unpleasantly noticed that c7-c8Q instead was mate it two.
nabla24.08.2006, 20:46:58
Oops, I should have made clearer that the previous anecdote happened in a giant board game.
nabla24.08.2006, 20:53:02
Some unefficient clock setting happened in a game where I partnered pagloppaglop against fermy and Frédéric Gouy. Both setters (I think it was fermy and pagloppaglop, it could have been me too, tell me if I am wrong :-) ) were equally clumsy as well as in a hurry to start the game, so that game number one was started before clock number two had been set. Then clock number one had to be reset, but in the meantime clock number two had been started. Then clock number two... well, you see what I mean. This must have happened four times before we could finally start the game.
After the opening we had the first sit, and when we checked the clocks... aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh ! One of them had not been started !
tjeulesbetes25.08.2006, 00:53:11
there were a number of local players passing by in the park who, when asked why they didn't join the tournament on saturday, had excuses like "I wasn't informed", or "I didn't know", which shows some level of dishnonesty given all the advertisement work done by nabla, but the most interesting reply came from a guy, when told by nabla "but the dates and infos are written everywhere", who said "yes, it's true, but I didn't realize" !
nabla25.08.2006, 20:30:26
Me and Wayra have a very vague remembrance about a mate by illegal double check, which happened because the mated player hold his move without pressing the clock, and then wrongly took back his move by adding an opponent's piece on the board. Wayra thinks that Tjeulesbetes was the mating player. Does anyone have a better memory than us ?

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