Photos by Duncan Kroot and Tristan Stevens
The month of february has gone by way to quickly again. As always at Noesis, a lot of chess has been played and several different activities were organised. For those from outside of the association, or Noesians who just can’t get enough, we provide a quick recap of last month. Also, we have a very exciting announcement for all student chess enthousiasts in Eindhoven (and beyond) at the end of this article, as well as an external tournament calendar!
OCW: Opening up Noesis
During the Open Culture Weeks, all culture associations within Scala open their doors to allow curious students to drop by at associations for a wide variety of different activities. Noesis was no exception to this rule, and therefore on Tuesday and Wednesday the 12th and 13th of February both a beginners course and an open rapid tournament were hosted.
In the former, Joost and Jitze educated the new generation of grandmasters in the basics of the game and provided with useful practical advise for them to be able to apply in the open rapid tournament that was organized the day after. During the rapid tournament we were delighted to encounter a bunch of new faces, even some that weren’t at the beginners workshop. Many of them were able to offer the more seasoned Noesians a good run for their money. In the end, many tense games were played, tears were shed (figuratively) and the atmosphere was relaxed. For the number-folks, the final standings are included below, where it can be seen that Chiel managed to snatch first place at the end of the evening.
Joost's Technobunker
In the dungeons of Luna, when most people were recovering from their exhausting day of lectures, some brave souls ventured to Joost’s Technobunker, a place of chaos, beer and bullet chess. The recipe: 1+1 and 1+0 games, a good supply of pilseners and a steadily decreasing quality of moves, compensated by a steadily increasing level of gezelligheid. When the beat died down late at night, and the dust had settled, it turned out that Bas managed to continue his dominance in bullet chess from the online to the OTB chess, with a beautiful trophy as a reward. As you can see this is something you do not want to miss, so be sure to look out for the next technobunker event.
IMC Grand student chess championship
If not for my own typographic distaste, I would have put many exclamation points in the header for this section.
As you may or may not know, a lot of work has been put in jointly organizing a chess tournament with our friends from the Nijmegen student chess association Tussen de Torens. This tournament will take place on April 24th in Nijmegen and we strongly encourage everyone of our association to join! It promises to be a great day, which will be even greater with many of us participating. For more details, and the subscription form check out the Tournament page on our very own website.
External tournament calendar
Finally, one of the questions we receive quite regularly is whether there are any interesting (rating) tournaments being organized in The Netherlands. In order to make finding tournaments that interest you a little easier, we are working on a tournament calendar with the most important information about upcoming tournaments. The plan is to embed this in the website, but until that time you can find the calendar in the following link: Link to the tournament calendar
