Trevor G. Browne High School Chess Club

The history of the top chess players over time

Interesting graph. Notice how even top players have bad times and there is always a pack fighting to be the best.

The history of the top chess players over time Note: The y-axis is a rating of how well chess players compete against each other. This rating varies over time, from EDO to CMR to ELO, because different da...

Hey guys
Another semester is coming to an end. Don't forget to practice during your break and stay safe out there. We want to do USCF tournaments including the one in January, but for that to happen you have to get tax donations. People can go to the Trevor website and donate that way or you should have the form. The link is https://az-phoenixunion-taxcredits.intouchreceipting.com/ all they have to do is select Trevor Browne and then for the reference put chess. Make sure that they say the money is for chess or we won't get it. If you want some ideas on what to study let me know by sending a message or getting in contact with me. I have found some good training material.

Great news from the qualifier. We have four people in the top 20. Three who should qualify for state (stay tuned for that). We also have the state qualifier runner up (school record) with Annette who finished 5.5/6. We also have the best fifth board in Jeben who finished 8/8 in the regular season playing boards 4 and 5. Trevor also has the most improved Junior in Ramon with just under 150 rating jump (who was most improved sophomore last year). Two weeks until state. Time to work hard and study hard.

PS also looking for old varsity players to come back and play against the team as warm ups.

Happy Sunday everyone. The varsity team played hard in the last five rounds and finished in 3rd place in the region. When playing Brophy (1st) it came down to the last 10 minutes of the game and time pressure for them to barely beat us. Maryvale only won 3-2. We got the best 5th board in the region in Jeben. Luis barely missed best 3rd board by 1 point and Ramon missed best 4th board by half a point. Played strong this year in the region and now get to prepare for State. Two weeks until the qualifier and 4 until state. Let's keep working hard and go for the top spot.

Enjoy your break and remember to play some games.

Good morning everyone. We have just under 2 weeks before we compete for the championship. Let's study hard and prepare as much as we can. Remember: Respect all and fear none.

Great job as a team this weekend. Alternates played well with all winning at least one game. Then Leo played up for a team missing a player and performed great on 3rd board. Varsity showed up to play at home winning all three rounds with 13.5/15 possible board points. Currently tied for 1st and have 3 weeks to prepare for a run at #1 in the region.

Just a friendly reminder everyone that we will be hosting tomorrow and everyone needs to be there at 7am to help set up. I will see you tomorrow.

Good Morning everyone. Hope you are enjoying your day off. Here is a puzzle for you to try and solve in under 5 minutes. Keep up the good work and as a Team we will come out on top.

Good evening team. As you probably heard we had to cancel the lock-in due to an issue with staffing. We will be having practice on Friday at 3:30. I do apologize for not having the lock-in, but we will do something else later in the year. Let's keep working hard and start looking at the season with Nationals as a goal. See you all Friday.

Coach Green

Good evening everyone,

Summer is almost over and it will be time to go win the region. You have all gotten stronger so far this summer and I hope you keep it up. Remember to get cleared ASAP as we have our chess lock-in and training session Friday the 12th (the first Friday of the year). This year will be full of tough lessons, difficult homework, and hard draining chess games. However, if as a team we persevere we will be one of the toughest teams for people to face.

Have a great last week of summer.

Coach Green

Good afternoon team.

Hope your studying is going well. We will be getting with Maryvale at the Peter piper pizza on 67th ave and indian school. We will be playing some sparring matches from 11am-3pm on July 23rd (next Saturday). Please bring a full size set If you have one. Look forward to seeing you and the progress of your studies. Please let us know if you can go or not.

Coach Green

Important Notice for all Chess Team members

Hope your summer is going well and your staying cool. There will be no tournament this weekend on ICC as ICC is working on giving me access to run tournaments for us. Until that takes affect the only option we have for long games is to challeng eachother (which I could tell you who to play like a tournament), playing in tournaments on ICC (visit https://www.chessclub.com/user/help/DailyStandard for the long time control tournaments), or meeting up somewhere to play a couple of games. Please spread the word and like the status when you have read it so we make sure everyone sees it. If you want to meet during the summer for a tournament let me know by commenting.

Keep up the good work and studying. This is our year.
- Coach Green

Happy Summer everyone. I am working with ICC on getting everything set up on a group page and a team so stay tuned for that. I also have all of the teams usernames for ICC so if you want them please message this page and I will send it to you. Thank you for a great year and can't wait to see how strong you get this summer.

Looking forward to seeing everyone tomorrow the 13th for our banquet. We will be having food, playing chess, and going over the summer plans. See you all tomorrow

Remember everyone next Thursday the 12th is our end of year bash. We will be playing games, talking about next year, and eating food. Don't forget to bring the food you were assigned. Your parents are free to attend and join in the games and fun. See you Thursday.

Tomorrow 4/5 there will be a meeting in Mr. C room. Please spread the word. This meeting is for us to go to a tournament on the 16th and is also about our end of the year party/event on May 13th. Please be there as it will be a short meeting.

Hey everyone wanted to apologize for the missed practices with everything going on. We will have practice tomorrow and I have some exciting news for you all tomorrow. Practice will start at 3:30. Spread the word and I will see you tomorrow.

Hello Everyone. Wanted to let you all know that on Thursday we will be playing for Varsity spots and getting ready for Saturday. You must be cleared to play. Keep on studying and remember to play at least 10 games of G/20 or longer each week and doing tactics (doing 40 a week is a good amount with just over 5 a day). You guys are a great team and great things are going to happen this year, I know it.

Good Afternoon everyone,
It is Friday, which means it is time for end of the week endgames. Today our lesson will be a two part lesson as an intro to our deeper lessons the coming weeks. We will be learning about two important factors in the endgame and the general outline of our endgame thinking process.

Two very important factors in the endgame are king activity and pawns. The king belongs in the center and/or around pawns in the endgame. With so few pieces on the board during this stage of a chess game the fear of being checkmated is less which allows the king to move forward. The other important factor in an endgame is pawns, since they can promote. All of the weaknesses, like being isolated or doubled, also get increased in the endgame as does the strengths, like being passed.

The weaknesses and strengths of pawns now brings us to our thinking outline for the endgame. During the endgame our thinking process will be two pronged: 1) Come up with a plan and 2) Come up with a way to implement that plan. When coming up with a plan we will focus on the pawns. Our plan will be based on our pawn strengths and the weaknesses of our opponents pawns. Once we have a plan based off of the pawns we will come up with a way to bring that plan to fruition. This part of the process will be about where to put our pieces and and make everything work together.

The two important factors of an endgame and the thought process presented above may seem very simple and possibly vague, however we will be going over everything in more detail with examples in the coming weeks on Fridays. This lesson was an introduction into what to keep in mind during an endgame and what we will be learning.

I hope you enjoyed learning about the two important factors of an endgame and a basic endgame thinking process. Keep on studying, playing games and trying to uncover the secrets of the wonderful game of chess.

Good Morning on this Thinking Tuesday (where we learn how and what to think during a game),

Our lesson today is about the most important aspects of a chess game. By learning these two principles you will be able to find better moves and evaluate positions easier. The two principles to keep in mind are: 1) Material and 2) Activity.

Material is very simple to understand, it is the amount of pieces you have. The person with the most pieces has an advantage. To increase your material you should take pieces when you can, after quick calculation of course.

Activity is a little more difficult, but still simple. Activity can be measured by how many squares your pieces control. To increase activity you should put your pieces in and around the center.

Try to remember these two principles in your games and it should help you find the best moves and improve your play. Next week we will go over an exact thinking process that will help you find the best moves based off of these two principles.

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Good evening everyone. I hope you enjoyed the first week of summer. Starting tomorrow there will be posts on here and my blog at chess.com on different days with lessons for you. A basic outline of what we will be studying each day: thinking Tuesday's, tactical Thursday's, end of the week endgames on Friday's, and a difficult chess puzzle on Sunday's. Our first lesson will be tomorrow on the two most important aspects of a chess game. Have a great night.

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Hello everyone and happy Monday. The alumni tournament will be held on May 8th (next Friday). We will discuss more details this Thursday so please be there, even if it is just for the first 20 minutes. Spread the word so we can have as many people there as possible.

Chess Vision Exercise

Hope everyone is having a good Wednesday. Here is our midweek exercise. You must find the best move after the sequence: 1) Kh2 Ra1 2) Ng4+ Kf7 3) Nh6+ Ke7 4) Ng8+ Kf7. Try to do it without moving any pieces.

Chess Vision Exercise This position is from a blitz game between Mikhail Tal and Hjartarson. Can you follow the moves in your head and find the checkmating move at the end of them? 40) Kh2  Ra1 41) Ng4+ Kf7 42) Nh6+ Ke7 43) Ng8+ Kf7 44) ?

Hope you all are having a good spring break. Now is a good time to spend some time on chess. You can do tactics on chesstempo.com or play games on chess.com all for free. When you are playing your games remember to use a thinking process and have a plan.

The Monday after break (October 13th) is a mandated practice. Everyone please show up on time and early if you can. Enjoy your break and remember to do a little practice during the time off.

Time for the puzzle of the day, or night since it is later than I wanted to post. In this position you are up the exchange, but your opponent has the bishop pair which can be annoying and still has fighting chances. What do you want to do in this game? For this puzzle it is white to move and there are two questions: 1) what is black threatening? 2) What is whites best move and the lines that follow? Good luck. Tomorrow there will be multiple puzzles since it will be tactical Wednesday.

Way to go this past weekend everyone. You guys did great. Here is a puzzle and we will have more on here more often. For this one it is white to move. For every puzzle you must know the move, the reason why, and the line of play that follows. You can comment questions, but for answers please message the group or bring them to practice on Thursdays.

Hello Everyone. Today is a practice day at El Oso at 10AM. Who is planning on coming? Should we take it somewhere inside?

Alhambra is having another USCF mini tournament for practice. It will be held on Monday starting at 12. The games will be G/25 with d/5 or possibly G/55 d/5. Alumni is welcome as well. This is a great opportunity to get some real games in and scope out the competition. Keep up the hard work. Our season will be starting fast. Let me know if you want to go and I can give you more details and let Barry know.

Hello everyone.
Hope you are enjoying your summer. Our next practice is scheduled for July 3rd which is a thursday at 10AM under the ramada by the parking lot and playground. If you plan to attend please like or comment on this status. Also please let others on the team know about it. I would like to have some people there (no one was there today) so I can help you become stronger. Keep on studying and lets achieve our goals.

Just a reminder that we have practice tomorrow under the ramada at El Oso Park at 10am. We also have practice on the 3rd of July which is a Thursday. Hope to see you all there.

Hope everyone is having a good summer. Here is some updates on meetings: Next friday the 13th Alhambra is having a USCF get together that would be good to go to. I will not be there as I will be in vegas. If you want to go please like for more information or send a message. Our next meeting will be the 20th (two weeks from tomorrow) at El Oso at 10 in the morning. I hope to see all of you there. Keep up the hard work and lets shoot for 7. Top 7 in the state that is.

Reminder: This Friday is our first summer team practice at El Oso. It is very important since I will be giving out a bunch of study materials for everybody. Hope you all can be at the Ramada at 10AM.

Hello Everyone. Hope your having a good weekend. Just so you all know Catalina Foothills are the National High School Champions. So if you know any of those players congratulate them. Also, Alhambra and Goldwater also made strong showings to represent Region 2. Lets work hard and show that we have what it takes to compete with champions. I would like to be on top next year in the region, state, and nation. Do you want it?

Here is a great puzzle for today. Hope you can find the answer. Make sure that you are all going over your games and doing tactics. I am keeping up with studying, are you? Black to move.