Forum

Crump Center has been remodeled and is open again. Montgomery Chess Club meets there on Tuesday Nights from 6pm the 8:30. 

Hello! Please consider joining! a place for theological thinkers and chess enthusiasts to enjoy, debates between atheism and the existence of God and beautiful chess games, all while learning about both subjects, oh and also a place for all sciences, philosophy, biology, and math https://www.chess.com/club/godly-mindsets/join

Steward Rachels is back! Playing the the recent State Championship and now has just completed as a participant/team member in Prague! https://new.uschess.org/news/rachels-returns-wins-sixth-alabama-championship-video Fantastic interview!

https://www.chess.com/library/collections/dr-euwes-end-game-of-the-month-7jDjnJXY A collection of Endgames Annotated by Dr Max Euwe. This is just one I have mined from Chess Review archives and did my best to transfer the notations from descriptive notation to algebraic and relay the ideas (all from Dr Euwe unless noted!)

I used to watch him play at UAB chess club some years back. Saw he has a book out now about his chess years. Looks interesting at first glance. I just received the Kindle version.

After 14 years living in Portugal my wife and I have finally managed to move to Alabama and are playing otb chess again. My next tournament will be the annual Queen of Hearts in Montgomery coming up later this month. Any members of this group plan to be there ?

Chessable is now part of Chess.com. A great addition! My reasons follow: First, it’s a well-run site and I have had zero problems with it. The navigation in study programs has a low learning curve and the selection is fantastic. Just the free courses are amazing. (Mostly shorter versions of the larger courses but still viable.} Second, Doesn’t break the bank. Courses run from zero to more but nothing is really outrageous. Of course the videos will run the price up but if you wait for the MANY sales and discounts they are will put together. Its hard not to buy to many! Kind of like chess books. You see one you want and its very tempting to press the get-it button. My average perchance I around 20 US dollars. But if you selective you can get some very nice courses. The courses themselves are based on timed repetition. There are settings to adjust time and you can pause sections that just don’t interest you. Drill sections that are of more interest. Ie I reloaded a section from one course because my Minor Piece endings were just plain bad. Ideally, I am currently learning several courses. One endgame course, completed but have it under a timed rotation. One tactical course, completed and again in timed rotation. Three opening courses. One middle game course. A couple courses I just like to look at about past players. In most of these couses I just pause some areas to keep the repitions down to a manageable level. A great tool. I will be very interested in how Chess.com is going to integrate this site. Tim

I have a request for Alabama Chess to consider joining a new US States Quick Chess League (rapid & blitz), but need to know if there's enough interest from our members to join. Please respond in this forum if you are interested. Thanks.

i was wondering how official is it and how do i join in? and there any live team matches or 24hrs?

Anyone here know Tim from the Dothan area ? He's an old friend of mine ( we go back to the early 70s ! ) and I am just curious.

Greetings! Pretty soon, the admins from the US States Team Chess League will be looking to set teams for the upcoming 6th season of the US States Team Chess League. I'm actually one of those admins, although I would consider myself a silent partner at best! I was, however, very involved at getting my last state of residence, South Dakota, organinzed into an online team and participating in this league. I think our team from Alabama is ready to be a part of this league, but wanted to put this out for comment before we make the leap. The seasons always start on July 4th, so we have some time to make this decision. The key for any team in addition to participation is to have an admin that is willing to keep the team on schedule with matches, etc. I will certainly take care of that on the admin end, so what I really just need from all of you is whether you want to commit to joining and participating in the league. From a team chess perspective, it's a really great deal as we take on our fellow states. As a new team, we would likely be placed in the lowest division for our first season which is a great way just to get our feet wet. Anyway, let me know what you think about this and we'll go from there. BTW, was at the State Scholastic Chess Championship this past weekend in Mobile. Almost 200 students participated in this event, and I got to see what Spring looks like! -Bob

Hey all, it's a new year, and it's about time we start doing something in this group. Therefore, I've sent out an open team match seek, and I've also accepted a challenge from the Sacramento chess group. Link can be found here: http://www.chess.com/groups/team_match.html?id=98223 We could also try a vote chess game, I could start up an exclusive tournament for the group, or we could do -(insert your own idea here). Any feedback / ideas are definitely welcome! Dc1985

Is anyone active in this group?

This is one of the highly awaited games in SEC (or even in US). Who do you think will win?

Just figured I'd share my enthusiasm in beating down the Gators in a humiliating game. I may be battered and bruised, after mistakenly inviting two dozen Gators fans over to watch the game... But at the end of the day, after a long, hard-fought game... We won 31-6. Which was pathetic. Still number 1.

I was playing a chess game against a local club coach (He's the Intermediate / Beginner teacher) and this finally happened to me... I have to share my joy with you! I hope you enjoy this craziness!

Isnt this an Alabama group ?! Where are the Tide supporters ? Alabama only needs to beat Texas on Jan 7th to be National Champions and Mark Ingram has won the Heisman , Bama's first Heisman winner ever !! Let's make some noise !

I use mainly e4(aka P-K4) openings as white, but ever since I started attending chattanooga chess club I have become more intune with what I used to refer to as the opening that killed me, d4(aka P-Q4). The reason I have adapted to d4 is because the top players at the club, class A and Expert level players, will typically use d4 opening variations. Inorder to get to the endgame I had to adapt to playing black against a queens gambit. Normally I responded to the gambit with a queens gambit declined variation, but from what an expert has taught me, a queens gambit accepted is more efficent. I digress, I will now continue with the question. Is there a clear definable difference gameplay wise of the two openings? I understand generaly understand what types of games will arise from either first move, but can the difference in the two openings be difined through comparison? My take on the whole matter is as follows. The move e4 is starting move that often than not leads to simple open positions where big tactics are a common occurance and games can be very close or won early, and thats why the e4 opening is always called the tactical opening. The move d4 commonly leads to complex closed positions where big tactics can be found within large amounts of calculating and games can end very close or early by a crushing victory. Please tell me your take on this topic.