St. Louis Leaves Atlanta Singing the Blues

The St. Louis Arch Bishops defeated the Atlanta Kings by a score of 3-1 in USCL action last night. Richard Francisco scored the Kings lone point with a win over FM Doug Eckert on board three. St. Louis was led by the $100,000 chess man, GM Wesley So, playing only a couple of nights after winning the Millionaire Open, who defeated GM Alonso Zapata on first board. GM Ben Finegold, with the Black pieces, defeated FM Daniel Gurevich. NM Matthew Larson also won with the Black pieces, besting the Kings NM Leo Martinez on fourth board.
Statistics on the Southeast Chess website show the Arch Bishops with an average rating of 2469, which is 69 points over the 2400 limit. How is this possible? I cannot explain this anomaly. If anyone can explain why one side is allowed to field a team 69 points over the limit, please leave a comment, or email me at: xpertchesslessons@yahoo.com.

Week 8: St. Louis Arch Bishops (STL 2469) vs Atlanta Kings (ATL 2399)
Wednesday, October 15, 8:00pm
1. GM Wesley So (STL 2751) – GM Alonso Zapata (ATL 2555) 1-0
2. FM Daniel Gurevich (ATL 2393) – GM Ben Finegold (STL 2591) 0-1
3. FM Doug Eckert (STL 2281) – Richard Francisco (ATL 2382) 0-1
4. Leo Martinez (ATL 2266) – Matthew Larson (STL 2251) 0-1
​St. Louis Wins 3-1 (http://www.southeastchess.com/atlanta-kings.html)

The Frisco Kid has now scored 5 1/2 out of 7 games and has a 2532 performance rating.

Eckert,Doug (2281) – Francisco,Richard (2382) [A15]
USCL Week 8 Internet Chess Club, 15.10.2014

1.c4 Nf6 2.g3 e5 3.Bg2 c6 4.d4 exd4 5.Qxd4 d5 6.cxd5 cxd5 7.Nf3 Nc6 8.Qd1 Be7 9.0-0 0-0 10.Nbd2 Re8 11.Nb3 Ne4 12.Be3 Bf6 13.Nbd4 Bg4 14.Rc1 Rc8 15.Qa4 Qd7 16.Nxc6 bxc6 17.Bd4 c5 18.Qxd7 Bxd7 19.Bxf6 Nxf6 20.e3 Bf5 21.Rfd1 Red8 22.Ne5 c4 23.g4 Nxg4 24.Nxg4 Bxg4 25.Rxd5 Be6 26.Rxd8+ Rxd8 27.Bf1 Rc8 28.Rc3 Kf8 29.b3 cxb3 30.Rxc8+ Bxc8 31.axb3 Ke7 32.Bd3 a5 33.Bc4 f6 34.Kf1 Kd6 35.Ke2 Kc5 36.Kd3 Kb4 37.f3 g5 38.Kd4 Bh3 39.Bg8 h5 40.Ke4 Kc3 41.Bf7 h4 42.f4 g4 43.Be6 Bg2+ 44.Kf5 g3 45.hxg3 h3 0-1
The Kings are in third place in the Southern division, with a record of 3 1/2-4 1/2, two points behind the Archies, but only one point behind the Sharks of Miami. Next week the Sharks face-off with the Dallas Destiny, while the Kings battle the Rio Grande Ospreys in the penultimate round of the regular season. The finale has the Kings facing the Sharks, a match which could determine a spot in the playoffs.

Daughter Maitland – St. Louis Blues (Boardwalk Empire)

Shocked to Find Cheating on PlayChess.com

Several days ago this notice appeared on the USCF website:

“USCF & Internet Chess Club Join Forces to Provide Online Rated Chess!

The Internet Chess Club (ICC) and the United States Chess Federation (USCF) are delighted to announce the start of USCF online rated tournaments on the ICC. Bonus: 20% off ICC memberships for USCF members!” (http://www.uschess.org/content/view/12816/772/)

Wow, what a “bonus.” How about playing on one of the plethora of places where you can play FREE?

Today a new thread appeared on the forum under “All Things Chess”:

“New form of cheating on PlayChess.com ??”

by MikeMurray on Mon Oct 06, 2014 11:22 am #285620
“The last few days, I’ve experienced what appears to be a new cheating technique on PlayChess.com. What happens is my time seems to simply evaporate and I lose on time the instant my opponent moves. These are rated games. The last occurrence, with a huge material advantage on the board, I had about 25 seconds left and had a “premove” set up. My opponent thought for about 30 seconds, moved, and bingo, I instantly lost on time. This has happened more than once. The first couple of times (with different opponents), I thought I’d simply zoned out and not noticed my opponent’s move. But this last time, I was clearly focused and paying attention.
Anybody else experience this or something similar?
By the way, my premove did execute on the board, so I technically lost on time when it was my opponent’s move!”

A short time later Mike Nolan weighed in, as he does often, with:

by nolan on Mon Oct 06, 2014 12:07 pm #285622
“This doesn’t sounds so much like a way of cheating as a poorly designed or buggy playing interface.”

Next up was Hal Terrie:
by Hal Terrie on Mon Oct 06, 2014 12:14 pm #285623
“This kind of thing is frequently caused by lag. If you have a slow connection to the server your moves (and the replies of your opponent) will not be transmitted right away but meanwhile the server is still counting down your clock. This can result in the sudden disappearance of time as you have described.”
— Hal Terrie

Mr. Murray answered:

Postby MikeMurray on Mon Oct 06, 2014 1:52 pm #285629
“In the past, the server seemed to be able to account for lag. I’m wondering if some other applications I’m running on my PC might #### this up. I had Skype up, as well as gDrive, couple of browser windows and the usual antivirus.”

Hal took another turn with:

by Hal Terrie on Mon Oct 06, 2014 2:12 pm #285631
“I don’t think it’s related to other applications. I have had the exact thing you describe happen to me – I try to move instantly but 30 seconds or a minute just vanish. I have had this happen on both ICC and Chess.com. Some servers have an internal test for lag and won’t let you start a game if your connection is too slow but I don’t think it always works.r
I get broadband internet from Comcast and there’s a tendency to think it’s very fast. However, when overall usage is very high (for example, in late afternoon when all the kids are getting home from school and simultaneously logging on), I have sometimes found my connection slowing to a crawl. It’s not just the chess servers, web pages take forever to load too. All I can do is just log off and come back later. Sometimes, if I try logging in instead using an alternate ISP (I have a wireless laptop card from Verizon), the problem vanishes.”
— Hal Terrie
(http://www.uschess.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=20621&sid=70db42d2bdfc049f1cc046fd44d6b0a0)

Blame it on the “kids”!

I do not play chess on the internet and wonder why anyone would do so. But then, I also wondered why any fool would play poker on a website. If you play against other humans you can at least see them dealing from the bottom of the deck. (http://www.pokernews.com/news/2013/05/audio-tapes-expose-ultimate-bet-cheating-scandal-14986.htm)

I had a problem trying to listen to music from the Hearts of Space (https://www.hos.com/). When the music stopped a message appeared onscreen, “Your internet connection is too slow. You must be in the US, which means your 20th century low-speed internet, unlike the twenty-first century ultra high-speed connection in most other advanced countries, like Japan and South Korea, for example, runs circles around your antiquated, obsolete, low-speed internet, while you pay exponentially more for infinitely less service.” Or something like that…

I was talking with a gentleman from another country in a coffee shop just the other day as his frustration mounted. “I cannot believe how slow the internet is here! It takes me many minutes longer to do my work! In my country all I have to do is THINK about where I’m surfing next and the page will appear ten seconds BEFORE I realize that’s where I wanted to go!”
I told him to have another cuppa joe while he waited. “Good idea,” he said.

Casablanca gambling? I’m shocked!