Instead of the world ending on Dec 21, 2012 like some people had predicted based on the ending of the Mayan Calendar, we had no such luck.

The Internet did act up, we had 50 mph winds, the snow that was supposed to be six inches deep was barely a half inch that mostly blew away, and we had to work.

And again the next day, too. But I checked with some Mexican colleagues about the correct interpretation of the Mayan Calendar, and the response was that it only signifies a new era, not the end of the entire world, but the era. Also the previous era of 5,200 years actually sucked for the Maya and although they are not wiped out, and still exist today, it still sucked. So good there's a new era, we could use it.

On that day, I beat a Russian! (12 years old) I even used the Leningrad Variation of the Dutch Defense to do it, so it was like using Russian tactics on him, right? And it worked, I had two Queens in the end and checkmated him. Also another guy over 100 points above me resigned, and another guy checkmated me, so I got two out of three on the last day of the old era.

New Era for the Capones

Now, for the Capones, we have signed up two new members, so we also have a new era for the Team.

We got Winwinwinner and LuckyLou500 on the team now.

About Tournaments

I think we should take a little while at first to let them get their feet wet before we send out a challenge for a Team Match. As long as they are unpaid, they can only be in one Tournament at a time, so only through Team Matches or one-on-one challenges can they get enough games to be satisfactory. But they better just get used to how the stuff all works first, and get used to the rhythm, so they don't time out on anything important.

We are having a few one-on-one challenges right now to get started, one rated and a couple unrated.

There is a requirement to play in five rated games before being allowed to enter a Tournament. You should also know there are two kinds of Tournament, the official chess.com ones, set up by the staff of the website, and then there are tournaments just started by any old member who wanted to be a tournament director.

The first kind usually start every month on the first day of the month, so the next round are due to start soon on January 1st. After that there will be another set February 1st. Those are the official ones. The unofficial ones usually have altered conditions, such as 'No Vacation' or shorter time controls like 1 or 2 days a move, instead of the standard three days a move. The official ones almost always allow vacation also.

About Team Matches

When we decide we are ready for one, we can send out a challenge either to somebody specific or else to the site in general. There are hundreds of teams big and small out there. We just figure out what conditions to place if we send the challenge, or else we accept a challenge from whoever has the nerve to try to challenge us.

Then we try to get everybody to join up since we are a small team, only so many guys. The other teams can usually easily put up top players to try to overmatch us, so they can win. After a couple days of frantic recruiting, then we and they each Lock Down the match, and then when both are locked down the computer matches up the players as best as it can, their top four to six against ours, and off it goes. Each player plays two games against their opponent, and then whoever gets the most wins, wins the match as a team.

If you look to the right sidebar you can see our past and current matches as a team and the standings and all that. We also had a Vote Chess for a while, but I think we had a timeout loss after several moves. By clicking on Team Matches, that is also where you get signed up once we set one up.

That is the object of having a team, so be ready and save a little of your best energy for when we do that. We prefer to only have one active at a time, but could have more if necessary, I think we had to have more last winter because people challenged us, and that ticked us off, so we went to war.

Right now we are still in the Team Match against Team Romania, because Manny's opponent was so slow with his extended vacations and other stupid wimp tactics, so Manny is still vigilantly battling that joker even 3 months after the rest of us were winding up. Good luck to Manny with that, we appreciate the fortitude it took to keep an eye on that sneaky Romanian. He was just trying to get a timeout, which is a lowlife thing to do.

the Capone Outfit out of Chicago

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