Norm's Chess Page

Latest Update Tuesday, March 30, 1999

IECG

After a long absence from chess competition, I have recently joined the International Email Chess Group. In the past, I have played club chess, tournament chess and postal chess. Email chess is similar to postal chess but without the postage and the play is much faster.

A new member first plays a training/evaluation game with an IECG tutor to demonstrate the rules for communicating moves and reports. In some cases, the player might also be assigned to a rating tournament with four opponents with a range of ratings to determine a starting rating. Instead, I was assigned a provisional rating of 1700. I told IECG on my applicaation that I had a USCF rating of 1850 when I quit playing but, since I am rusty, I wouldn't expect to start that high so that seems reasonable.

I first signed up for a class tournament comprising seven players in the same rating class (Class 2 which includes ratings from 1400 to 1799) and, thus, six games for each player. There werre players from the Netherlands, Canada, England, Australia, New Zealand and two from the United States. IECG tries to include no more than two players from any one country in a class tournament. They are truly international. I did well, scoring five wins and one loss.

Next, I played a two-game match with one of the players from the class tournament, the one I lost to. He and I split, one win and one loss. At the same time, I signed up for a class 2 quad tournament comprising four players, with two games against each other player (one as white and one as black). So far, I have lost one game and have five interesting games in progress.

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