My last OTB game/event was in March 2020. Since then most of tournaments are being held online due to ongoing pandemic.
I follow the news closely and it appears that USA administers from 1 million to 2 millions of covid-19 vaccine shots every single day.
That is a lot of shots and it appears that sooner (months) rather than later (years) herd immunity (75% of the population gets the vaccine) is going to be achieved.
I will try to get my vaccine shortly after I am qualified (it is by age in the state of Connecticut) which I expect to happen mid-April.
I wonder what folks here are thinking in regards to return of OTB chess events. When do you expect to direct/participate/visit as spectator by the OTB chess event? How do you think future OTB events are going to differ from those held in pre-pandemic era?
What do you think about future scholastic events? Would parents be comfortable to bring children there?
We have a chess club in the area where I live and club has been active with OTB chess even in pandemic.
They closed for three months in March 2020 and re-opened in June 2020 with strict code that requires people to pre-register and pay the entry online. They supply all the equipment and have strict mask policy as well as other safety measures. They only run one event per week (45 minutes quads) and it is very popular, next week event is being sold as soon as this week event concludes. So OTB chess is possible in some limited capacity even now. Any thoughts?
I am already eligible for vaccine in W. Pa. and have had my first shot. I would happily play OTB with anyone after my second shot has “taken”. But organized events are another matter. The Pgh. Chess League shut down a year ago and I don’t know when it will start up. The Pgh. chess club shut down and quit paying rent in mid 2020. (It still exists and its equipment is in storage, but its organized events are all online.) If there are people that are making plans for starting up again, I haven’t heard from them. We shall see.
I am equally ignorant of what’s going on in scholastic events around here. I have a niece in Kansas whose 10-year-old daughter is a chess player, so I hope they can get something going over there.
Yes, I still have a bit of a sour taste in regards to that last OTB event of ours and missed opportunity to play “team Yusupov” in the last round.
I won’t play OTB until I am fully vaccinated and probably would wait at least another month after that.
I likely won’t participate in the local club though, as I feel very uncomfortable wearing mask during the game. I wear glasses that get fogged instantly. I hope that requirement may get relaxed for fully vaccinated people at some point closer to US Open event that I was pointed to in a different area of those forums.
I think scholastic chess will not do much until next fall, the schools are pretty much set on what they’re doing with what’s left of this year (much of it online) so I wouldn’t expect much OTB scholastic activity, even in-house events, until next fall, and I don’t know how much of it to expect by then. Maybe it’ll come back fast, maybe it will build up slowly, maybe we won’t see the activity we saw two years ago for a decade or more.
OTB adult events might start coming back sooner, but I really don’t expect a lot of them until Labor Day, just because summer isn’t ‘chess season’. Also, states and cities are going to be all over the map in terms of opening back up, even if we get more than 50% of the adult population vaccinated by the end of May. We’ve probably lost some organizers permanently.
Until social distancing guidelines are relaxed, the days of 2 boards at an 8 foot table are over, and rows probably have to be more like 12 feet apart rather than 5 feet apart. I doubt most organizers (or conference facilities) will have the ability to provide plexiglass barriers at tables.
So 15x8 = 120 square feet for 2 players rather than 8x8=64 square feet for 4 players. I’d probably assume I need at least 75 square feet per player by the time you figure in water stations, etc.
I am in agreement with your assessment although I am afraid that even fall 2021 is too optimistic. In my area pretty much all of before and after school chess program has been shut down and online versions of those were not very successful. It will take time to rebuild those in the fall of 2021 with some kids no longer interested and new kids are coming in. Also school districts may not be as welcoming as those were in pre-Covid 19 era. Additionally, inevitably some of the organizers sustained a financial damage and redirected their time and effort to other ventures.
I am more optimistic about adult chess, considering even US Open in August has been announced and appears to be highly possible.
This is one of the events, I never participated (although I played in National Senior twice), so I am looking forward to it this year.
I can’t wait. I’ve undertaken the most intense chess training program in my life during this Covid shutdown.
I’m out to prove that a 69 year old guy can improve from Class C to Expert in a reasonable amount of time. About a year.
I can’t even begin to describe the incredible changes to my brain brought about by my study of tactics. it has improved my thought processes in everything I do.
The last 5 years I’ve had two serious car accidents, had serious injuries from one, suffered from colon cancer, had two major operations related to the colon cancer, and had frequent bouts of ultra high blood sugar related to the cancer treatments.
I’m 71, and my peak rating of 1651 was in about 1986. I wonder what the record is for the oldest player to make expert or master, we get asked about the youngest player to make master all the time, but not the oldest player.
Well, it looks like Michael Jaglom may hold the record for the oldest player to earn an Expert rating, at age 78, and it looks like 11 have done so after turning 70. He does not appear to have played since 2018, but was still playing at A player strength then.
(There may be others for whom we don’t have a birthdate, though.)
The question of the oldest player to make master is harder to answer. Fred Wilson did it when he was 71. 3 others did it at an older age, but that was back in the early 90’s and we may not have a complete enough record of their tournament play from back then to know when they first hit 2200.
Way back in 2015 I increased my UCSF rating by about 130 points in one month. I have to tell you all that I feel much stronger now.
Besides the study of tactics, i have a coach. I think he’s exceptional. Great teacher. Was rated about 2400 in his day before the rating system was changed.
We will see if the World Open is live or online. Same with the US Open. If either or both of those events are OTB, that will be a threshold event.
The restoration of psychology for larger events is going to be tricky. Some people are already out there living life as they did before the pandemic. Many others will return very slowly, particularly to events with 500 or 1000 players in a room. National Scholastics and large opens are stuffed with people cheek to jowl, lest we forget. They also operate on relatively small margins, so does US Chess take the risk of scheduling a National Scholastic with the possibility of half the normal attendance?
We will see. I am sure some of the largest organizers in the country took hits on their contracts due to the pandemic, and are going to be cautious moving forward.
The CDC has just revised its guidance for schools to say that students who are wearing masks can sit 3 feet apart. That might make scholastic chess events easier to set up and run. The 6 foot guidance still applies to sporting events and meals, it isn’t clear if chess would be included. However, the students would be facing each other as opposed to all facing the same way.
OTB events are going to present challenges. More space will likely be needed, and that probably increases costs. Most chess events don’t utilize a lot of hotel facilities (sleeping rooms and kitchen) so they’re probably not as profitable to the venue.
Posters are questioning if the World Open and the US Open will be held online or in person [IPC=In Person Chess]. I would like to point out that the National Open in Las Vegas in the middle of June is currently listed as IPC for the main event and the side events. You should ask about this event before questioning the other later [in the year] events.
Larry Cohen
PS: you will likely see some restricted IPC events where safety messures are in place and the number of players is limited to ensure social distancing. Quads is a good example of such an IPC event, and is something I did/held back in August.
As for the oldest player to become a master, I believe it might have been the late, Bernard Friend of NJ who achieved that in 1994 at the age of either 74 or 75 as he peaked out at 2203, and was definitely a master level player well before then, but never achieved the master rating until that time.
I would love to get back to OTB chess, and with the US Open this year being in NJ, I probably would skip it, because I would not be comfortable being in a room with 500+ players and am due to get my 2nd shot tomorrow, so I will have been fully vaccinated. I have tried Online Chess, and the 2 events I played in were disasters as clerical mistakes were made, and I attempted to play last Saturday, only to be done in by my modem “Crapping Out” last Saturday morning, and had to withdraw from that event since I had no internet. I might try again to play in more online events, as I have been done in by bad luck, and hopefully regardless of whether it is an online event, or OTB, I will be back!
Bernard Friend was one of the players I referred to, but since we don’t have detailed history of his tournaments before late 1991, I wasn’t sure if his 1994 achievement of a 2200+ rating was the first time he did it. Thanks for the information.
