Vote Chess Masters Tournament!!

Edit : All Games Have Begun! Links to all games here.

Starting in the next few days we're going to be facing off against six of the top teams on chess.com :

French Defence Fanatics (we play black)

Chess Team International (we play white)

Team Canada (we play white)

Indian Marauders (we play black)

Connecticut Chess Players (we play black)

Endgame Lovers (we play white)

Some of these teams look pretty damn tough & we will be playing more vote games at once than ever before (sorry guys, I thought it was one at a time).

We start one game everyday starting with our first against the French Defense Fanatics (one of the toughest teams) on March 23rd!

If you don't have the time or inclination to participate in all the games please choose one or two you want to focus on. I think we're strong enough to be major contenders for the Division A champion but it's going to be rough & it will be an uphill battle. Most of the teams don't have a zillion games going at once like Fast Players or only one or two 2000+'s on their team and they will be focused on these vote matches more than any other because they want to win too.

Any lurkers and/or non-chess.com members now's the time to step out of the shadows & join your CFC brethren (and Fanatic loyalists ) fight the good fight!

Let the force be with us!

I will post links here to all our games as they begin.

Note : the time control will be 2 days per move so there will be plenty of time for discussion.

I think I'll announce right now that I am voting e6 in our game against the French Defense Fanatics .

Sounds good, they probably won't know that opening very well.

Does it make sense to coordinate some of the openings here first?... Just to get it out of the way?

I won't be playing. I don't participate in Vote Chess, and want to concentrate on my games after I finish my move into town (to the apartment - 12 days until the move!).

This is definitely on my to-do list regardsless of anything else I have. I'm in for all the games.

I suggest King's Indian vs the marauders.

I think I'm not going to contribute much in the opening phase of all the games. My knowledge of opening theory is rather poor and the openings I do know are rather unfit for these games.

The openingsI know, i know pretty well

Sicilian Dragon
Kings Indian
Kings Indian Attack
Grand Prix Attack
Ruy - Worrall attack

I don't know any opening all that well but I know a few fairly well including the Sicilian Accelerated Dragon & the Noteboom variation of the semi-slav (even though I lost to GatoNegro with it that one game) as black and the c3 Sicilian and Guicco Piano as white. I like 2. Nc3 vs. the Caro-Kahn. I have various weapons against less common openings like French & Pirc that I'm not as confident with and an an anti-English I like. My memory for openings isn't the greatest but opening explorer helps with that & correspondence is really helping me understand openings better!

Narz said:

I like 2. Nc3 vs. the Caro-Kahn.

Click to expand...

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Epic Fail...

j/k

Main lines FTW! I'm personally competent with just about everything Caro-Kann related. I'm reasonably competent with certain versions of the Dutch Defence too. I'll try to contribute in as many games as possible though.

I don't know much about any opening, but ignorance has never prevented me from speaking my opinion before...

..my gut feeling tells me we won't be seeing Scandinavian as Black

Mehmed100 said:

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Epic Fail...

j/k

Main lines FTW! I'm personally competent with just about everything Caro-Kann related. I'm reasonably competent with certain versions of the Dutch Defence too. I'll try to contribute in as many games as possible though.

Click to expand...

2. Nc3 can transpose into the main lines later. In the meantime you give black plenty of opportunity to go wrong.

Anywayz, as black I think we should play the Sicilian since it seems to be the most popular black defense among our crew. I'd be happy to play 1. ... e5 or 1. .... c6 but those don't seem as popular. Against d4 I suppose we could go with the king's indian since it seems popular & I suppose is somewhat similar to the dragon.

As white it seems 80-90% of us play e4 so I think we should go with that & see what develops.

Our game vs. the French Defense Fanatics has begun but they're playing white so it won't be our move for two more days.

Tomorrow our game vs. Chess Team International will start (one of the easier teams judging by ratings but we still should give 'em our all). We'll play White in the game so our groundbreaking first move will be played in that match.

Agree on using the Sicilian Defense, though I'll keep my word of not contributing in the opening phase of the game.

(wisely keeps his mouth shut about his odd gambit repertoire that nobody uses... I doubt we're going to see the good ol' Evans gambit here. We're probably going to play it safe, which means I might as well leave straight away )

I'll vote for the Evans if we get to that point after the first 3 moves . Of course I'll be voting for the Scotch Gambit before then...

Our game vs. Chess Team International has begun! 1. e4 FTW!

Evans Gambit is cool! One of the few gambits that I really, really like.

For those of you (like me) who don't know a think about the Evans Gambit (or is it with an apostrophe? ), you might enjoy this YouTube watchit I found.

I can't say I'm a huge Evan's Gambit fan. IMO, it's not a good choice for a correspondence match.

Also, I had a qualm with the video saying on move 8 in this position black "has to" play Ke7. I don't see why that is so.

Seems like black equalizes fairly easily with best play, more easily than in the main lines of the Giuoco piano.

I'm willing to play along though if it's the will of the team.

Personally though if we get a 1. ... e5 responded though that we face the Two Knights Defense which is more fun (IMO) than facing the Piano.

The Vienna is always fun too. I love the crazy king's gambit lines in it, but it's probably not the best for correspondence. It's also risky.