US Chess League 2010, Schedule has been Released

Well, as the title suggest, the US Chess 2010 Schedule has been released. This blog is going to focus on the Philadelphia Inventors (formerly Masterminds).

Hopefully I do a bit better job with this then I did with the 2010 US Chess Championship! I do plan on putting more of those games up, but honestly that has pretty much grinded to a halt. Oh well.

Lets look at the Philadelphia Inventors schedule.

Week 1, 7:15 pm, Monday August 23rd

Philadelphia Inventors vs. New Jersey Knockouts

Week 2, 7:00 pm, Wednesday September 1st

Philadelphia Inventors vs. Boston Blitz

Week 3, 7:00 pm, Tuesday September 7th

Philadelphia Inventors vs. New York Knights

Week 4, 7:15 pm, Monday September 13th

Philadelphia Inventors vs. Baltimore Kingfishers

Week 5, 7:00 pm, Monday September 20th

Philadelphia Inventors vs. New England Nor'easters

Week 6, 8:15 pm, Monday September 27th

Philadelphia Inventors vs. Chicago Blaze

Week 7, 7:15 pm, Wednesday October 6th

Philadelphia Inventors vs. New England Nor'easters

Week 8, 7:15 pm, Monday October 11th

Philadelphia Inventors vs. Baltimore Kingfishers

Week 9, 7:15 pm, Wednesday October 20th

Philadelphia Inventors vs. Manhattan Applesauce

Week 10, 7:30 pm, Monday, October 25th

Philadelphia Inventors vs. Carolina Cobras

Those are all the scheduled matches. After that, there is a Quarterfinals and Semifinals round, and finally there is the Championship Match.

The Philadelphia Inventors Roster has not yet been made, so I cant give overviews of the players yet. Once it is set, though, I will try and scrounge up some nice biographical information about each of the players so we get a better idea of who are team's chess players are!

One person I am fairly sure will be on the team, though, has also had a very nice tournament recently. Bryan Smith is an IM (International Master) living in the Philadelphia area (apparently he is from Alaska!) and he recently won the Philadelphia International.

I am not too familiar with the Philadelphia International tournament as a whole, but I believe it was first started last year, in 2009. The goal of the tournament is to give US Chess players a chance to get what are called Norms. It is necessary to get a few Norms in order to receive international titles, such as International Master and Grand Master.

A Norm is achieved if a player has a sufficiently high performance rating and played against players from enough Federations. Each country has its own Federation. This creates a problem for US Chess Players, because only Canada or Mexico are close by. Even then, many chess tournaments are far away from either of these two countries! Because of this, US Chess Players can be very successful and achieve very high ratings but still never end up getting a Grandmaster or International Master title. That is a shame. The title doesnt do all that much, but it is a great honor.

The Philadelphia International helps US players get Norms because foreign GMs receive free admission to the Philadelphia International. Thus, foreign GMs can come to Philadelphia, play in the tournament for free, and if they do well take home 1,000 or so dollars. That is not a whole lot, but it covers the plane ticket and hotel room (almost!).

The Philadelphia International is also scheduled right next to the World Open, though. This means that any foreign GMs that were planning on attending the World Open can come a week early and play in the Philadelphia International. As far as I can tell, it hasnt been tremendously successful in attracting foreign GMs, but hopefully that changes. It has been moderately successful, though, and both years quite a few US players were able to get Norms.

Needless to say, then, with a handful of GMs playing in the tournament it is a great sign for the Philadelphia Inventors that Bryan Smith won the thing! I hope he got a GM norm, as I believe he is fairly close to achieving a Grandmaster title. As far as I know, only a few US born players have achieved the Grandmaster title in the past 10 or 20 years, so having someone in Philadelphia achieve this would be awesome!

I will give some updates on the US Chess League as more information is posted on their website.

By the by, the Philadelphia Inventors home base is the Franklin Mercantile Chess Club, which is located at about 20th and Walnut Streets in Center City Philadelphia. Last I heard, membership to the Franklin Mercantile Chess Club is 50 dollars a year. I am not sure if they let spectators come in and watch for free. They do let everybody get one free visit, though, so if you have never been there this might be a good chance to check it out. Unfortunately for them, Chess is very easily enjoyed on the internet, though, so following games live or following blogs like mine should also let you enjoy the US Chess League.

It should be an interesting thing to follow!