Starting on Monday, January 11, there will be a chess night at Brunskill School from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm. The purpose of this night is twofold. First, it will give us crusty old veterans a more comfortable place to play (carpet on the floor, AND good lighting). Second, it will be an inviting place for newcomers, especially the younger ones who may have found currently-under-construction Lower Place Riel a little intimidating.

Last night approximately 10 people got together at Paddock Wood to play poker, play speed chess and drink beer in order to raise money for the 2010 Battle at the Border. In the end, a total of $245 was raised ($75 from poker buy-ins, $150 from beer sales, and $20 from a David Steer donation).

A big thank you to Steve Cavan and Paddock Wood for giving us a place to play and donating all of the money from the beer sales to the Battle. Thanks also to everyone who came out, as well as to David for the generous donation.

You might have noticed that at intermittent times, our web site has looked like some sort of house foreclosure site, with support in Spanish. It appears that someone has been mucking around with the domain name servers and pointing saskchess.com at some server that is not ours.

The headline is not meant to be bad grammar. Kevin Me is currently headed over to Turkey to play in the World Youth Chess Championships, from November 11 to 23. You can track his progress at official web site, or hopefully Kevin will be so kind as to either post here or on his blog.

All the best, Kevin, and be sure to bring some FIDE rating points home with you!

Keith MacKinnon of North Battleford won the Edmonton International Qualifier this weekend, beating Dale Haessel (2290) and Robert Gardner (2276) in the process. With his fine victory, Keith has earned the right to play in the Edmonton International to be held December 17 to 21.

While I am sure all of us are happy for Keith, sadly, it is time to retire his long-standing nickname of "Short Pants". You see, there was a time (and not that long ago), when Keith was less than half of his current stature, both height- and rating-wise, so the nickname was both accurate and justified.

Those days are gone.

Of course, the best way to recover from the death of a nickname is to come up with a new one. Let the competition begin, but please, keep it clean and civil, at least on this web site.