As the academic year is getting closer and closer to its end, we will treat you with a recap of what has been going on in our association during the last few months.
Below we will give you a peek into the activities that took place, which range from simple free-play club nights to participation in chess tournaments with over 100 participants, to our first constitution drink, to a large cultural festival. We finish it off with the introduction of our new feature, Noesis Meetups. In short, be sure to read until the end!
Agreeable April
The month of April was a month where the club nights were quite relaxed. Nonetheless, it will forever be a remarkable month in the history of our association.
Starting off with a bughouse tournament , after which our club nights quieted down a little because of the exam periods.
We did have a little special event during the exam week: on April 20th, also known as 4 – 20, we celebrated by hosting a bongcloud theme tournament. Every game started with 1. e4 e5 2. Ke2 Ke7, which proved to lead to very interesting games! A good group of people came by to put their minds to something other than their exams, while the others delved deeper into their courses to play chess another day.
That being said, the exam weeks ended with a huge bang: on Saturday, April 24th, the first edition of the IMC Grand Student Chess Championship took place. This event, the biggest student chess event in the Netherlands ever (that we know of), was a great success. You can read all about it here, and check out the photos here.
Soon after that, our Wednesday night coincided with the birthday of our King Willem-Alexander. We celebrated this with a King of the Hill tournament and a good amount of orange ‘tompoezen’.
A mix of emotions at the IMC Grand Student Chess Championship. (Photos by Levi Baruch)
Marvelous May
May has been an action-packed month for Noesis! The activity committee once again came up with a bunch of great activities.
Opening talks
We started off on the 4th of May with a number of opening talks by our members. Ege shared with us his pet line of the Petroff Defence, while Lars presented his King’s Indian Defence, and Nino gave us a breakdown of his beloved French Defence. You can review their presentations by clicking the links. After the opening talks, we held a 10+0 rapid tournament for the remainder of the evening.
Tournaments (a small one and a big one)
On the 11th of May, we returned to our basis by playing a good old rapid tournament (20+0). And although this is the only activity being organized by Noesis that week, many Noesians could also be found at the WLC weekend tournament in Eindhoven, a classical tournament organized by one of the non-student-chess clubs in Eindhoven. More will follow on this in another article!
Shogi night
On the 18th, we stayed in the realm of board games, but travelled to another part of the world, as the activity committees of Kinjin (the Japanese culture association) combine their forces to organize a shogi/chess night where the shogi players learn something about our beautiful game, while we get an insight on this immensely popular Japanese variation on chess (or is chess a variation on shogi?).
It was fun to get a look into the world of Shogi, but it seems unlikely that many chess players will drop chess to pursue a Shogi career. One interesting difference was the pieces: Shogi pieces have a more limited scope than chess pieces, which leads to a slower pace of games. Shogi tournament games tend to have a time control of 9 hours per person (!). Fortunately, we managed to make it a bit quicker than that. In any case, it was great to have our first real crossover activity with another culture association and learn about this different game.
BBQ
After expending all the thinking power in lectures and at the shogi/chess night, our members recharged at the Noesis barbecue; a nice social event, where 25 members got to know their fellow members better outside of the chess board and enjoy some nice meat/veggies. Due to the potential for a storm, we unfortunately could not hold the barbecue ourselves. However, Hubble jumped in to prepare our food in their kitchen and deliver it to us inside. We enjoyed our food and had a fun time. After that, the weather had cleared out, and we went outside to play some football. After that, a number of our members got introduced to the beautiful game of ‘René le Bak’. We also held a ‘sjoel’-competition, in which the competition was fierce. A few of our members were not done yet after this and even ended up in Stratum afterwards. All in all, it was a great night!
Lunafest
However, the fun in May was far from done yet. On Saturday, the Lunafest took place. This is a big cultural festival in which all culture associations at TU/e participate. We contributed to a number of acts; firstly there was ‘The Game’, a beautiful cooperation between Footloose, Quadrivium, Klink, and Noesis. It was about a game between Judit Polgár and Gary Kasparov, in which the little girl beat the great Russian champion. Then, Thomas gave some glimpses into the beauty of endgame studies, to beginning players. Finally, we presented a broad collection of creative chess boards! Think of a chess puzzle on a dart board, a chess board with a butcher’s knife on it, or a chess board with 500 pieces on it! Get a taste of the Lunafest in the aftermovie below! Credits go to the cameraman (and Noesis member!) Duncan Kroot.
Scotch and Scotch
We ended off the month with the one and only Scotch and Scotch evening. This idea popped into the heads of the board members a long time ago, and it finally came to fruition. Promoted by the beautiful poster on the right, it promised to become a great evening.
Dressed in a kilt, Joost and Bas shared their knowledge of a number of Scotch whiskies and variations of the Scotch opening. You can check out the opening info plus some extra details here. The participants then played a game against each other in this specific variation with this specific whisky. We repeated the process three times, with different variations and different whiskies. The vibes were getting better with the pouring of every whisky as we ended off the month with a bang.
OKU tournament
However, for some of our members, the chess month was not over yet. After the exhausting WLC tournament, most Noesians took a break from weekend tournaments for at least a little while. However, a brave group of 7 Noesians had not had enough yet and decided to travel to the Open Championship of Utrecht (OKU in Dutch). You can read all about it in an article that will be coming soon!
Jubilant June
We finished off the year in style with another month of diverse activities: a healthy mix between high-quality chess activities and great non-chess activities.
Tournament recap + blitz tournament
After the WLC weekend tournament and the OKU, quite a few fantastic games had been played by our members. On this club night, we gave our members the chance to highlight some interesting moments from their games and share them with the rest of the club. After that, the evening ended with a small but intense blitz tournament.
Noesis afternoon
On a sunny Saturday afternoon in June, it was time for the Noesians to go outside. We had a relaxed lunch on the field next to Luna, after which we continued with some sports: football, basketball, swimming, a ‘bommetje’-contest, and volleyball all came by this afternoon. It was great to see the Noesis members in a different setting, and enjoy some sports together.
First Constitution Drink
On the 8th of June, we achieved a milestone in the history of the club: the very first constitution drink! In this drink, all kinds of people from inside Noesis and outside Noesis came to congratulate us with our constitution. Although the drink was roughly 10 months too late, we were very happy that this event could take place before the end of the year. Unlike other associations, Noesis has not had decades yet to build up connections with other associations in Eindhoven. That being said, the turn-out was far from bad, and the board received its fair amount of Cobo presents and shots.
Krijn took on the respectable role of pedel as he made a very good effort at shouting through all the ‘VOOOOOOOLUUME’ from the audience. Early on, a very serious ‘bras’-attempt was made at our treasurer. A group of 13 people, approximately equally many as the order committee, tried to take him with them. Fortunately, they had not carefully decided in which direction they would go, which allowed the order committee to come and interfere.
Sadly, not all ‘bras’-attempts were parried: in particular, the guestbook was not kept sufficiently safe at all times, as ESAC and Quatsh joined forces to bras it.
In the end, however, all board members stayed afloat and managed to survive this memorable evening.
Training by Dolf Meijer
The next club night stood in great contrast with the previous one. Where the constitution drink was a non-chess related festivity, we now sat down for a serious, 3 hour chess training. Dolf is one of the best chess trainers in the country, who has had many years of experience. He has trained just about every kind of player you can imagine, even including the top junior talents of the country.
Besides this, Dolf also runs 040schaakt. Together with a team of enthusiastic chess players, he teaches chess to primary school children in Eindhoven. It is a great side job for a student, where you can earn some money while sharing your enthusiasm for chess with children. Pieter, Bart, Jitze, and Krijn are already participating. Be sure to shoot them a message or mail to 040schaakt@gmail.com if you are interested!
The evening started off with a ‘warming-up’, in which we solved a page of challenging mate-in-two problems. After that, we took a closer look at a game that Jitze played at the OKU. The lion-share of the evening was spent discussing and solving difficult rook endgames.
I am sure that all participants learned a lot this evening, and Dolf hopes to see more of you join him at 040schaakt!
Photos by Levi Baruch
Simul by Guus Bollen
For the final club night of the year, we had a special guest. The local Candidate Master Guus Bollen came by for a simultaneous exhibition! Guus took on the enormous task of playing 20 Noesis members at the same time. It took him nearly four hours, but in the end he prevailed with a score of 16.5 – 3.5. Congratulations to Théo, Jasper, Phil, Youri, and Matteo on keeping Guus to a draw! There was only one Noesian who managed to beat him, which was Jitze. He threw out one of his specialty openings, the ‘O Sullivan gambit. By means of a beautiful trick he managed to get into an endgame a piece up, which he converted without any real mistakes. Let’s have a closer look at this game.
Introducing Noesis Meetups
With this simultaneous exhibition, the regular club nights came to an end. They will be back starting from the introduction week next academic year. However, this does not mean you cannot play chess!
Our web committee has created a feature, Noesis meetups! Go to sccenoesis.nl/meetups to access it. The idea is to return to the same idea as the summer last year, when we held spontaneous meetups in parks in Eindhoven to play some casual chess and enjoy the sun.
Whenever you want to initiate such a meetup, go sccenoesis.nl/meetups and create a meetup. The board will approve the meetup as soon as possible, after which your meetup will appear in the Noesis calendar.
If you want to stay fully up to date, you can sync the Noesis calendar into your regular Outlook or Google calendar, and you will receive updates of meetups in your very own calendar. Go to sccenoesis.nl/activities/month to learn how to do so.
Do note that you need to be logged in on the website to use this feature.
Also do not forget to post in the Noesis puzzles&memes Whatsapp group that you want to meet up. Hopefully, in this way, we can bring people together to play chess in these summer months as well.
Good luck with your exams, and we will see you around this summer or next year!