Club Meeting – September 7th

In today’s meeting, James showed the following video to the Pawns group:

Chris reviewed the Ruy Lopez opening and showed the following video to the Knights group:  

Ruy Lopez is the short name of Rodrigo Lopez de Segura who was a Spanish priest who lived between 1530 and 1580.  Ruy Lopez wrote a book in 1561 called Libro de la invención liberal y arte del juego del Axedrez which was one of the first definitive books about modern chess in Europe. 

The Ruy Lopez Opening (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5) is named after him, as is a variation in the Petroff Defence (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nxe5 Qe7).

The painting above shows Ruy Lopez being defeated by Leonard di Cutri, an Italian chess master.  After Leonard won against Ruy Lopez in Spain, he asked for his town Cutro to be exonerated of taxes and called Cutro “City of Chess”, where every year this event is remembered in a traditional day in August.

We also handed out some bonus chess homework that reviews how to take Chess notation during a chess game.  We ask that each student play a game of chess this weekend and write down the game in Chess notation on the provided notation sheet.  Students that turn in the notation sheet with a game written down will get a Chess buck at next week’s meeting.  If you did not receive the handout at today’s meeting, you can download and print it at home using this link.