Welcome to the Green Dot League newsletter! This is where we share updates on league standings, highlight some great moments from league matches, learn a thing or two from our coaches, and of course, share any news about Rookly.

Our next Rookly League is Wednesday, May 27, starting at 3:45 PM. Over the past few weeks the Rookly Green Dot League has begun in spectacular fashion. Dozens of students from each of Green Dot’s 16 campuses are competing in Rookly’s weekly chess league.

Rookly’s Green Dot League meets weekly, empowering students of all ages and skill levels to test out their chess skills. A few schools and students have separated themselves as particularly advanced, but the season is long.

Let’s look at the current standings. The standings page is public, so please feel free to share with parents, friends, or whoever you think might be interested!

Standings

Now let’s take a quick look our top performers from last week:

Game of the Week

The Game of the Week goes to Jesus M from Ánimo Leadership (White) and Nathan C from Ánimo Florence-Firestone Charter (Black).

We join this game on move 44 with Black to move. Take a moment to assess what’s going on here—is either player ahead, or is this a drawn position? What’s the best move for Black?

It’s actually a drawn position! Note that White’s king and pawns are completely unable to move.

Black has more freedom to move, but it’s not possible to make any progress.

A suggested continuation by the computer is for Black to threaten White’s rook with Kd3.

The problem is that (as we noted earlier) White cannot move any of their other pieces, so when White offers up a free rook on d2, taking results in stalemate.

Not taking, however, results in a still drawn position, but a more complicated one.

In the game, Black wants to win and tries taking on c4.

This allows White to recapture without penalty, and this game now heavily favors White.

This game saw great play from both players and took many twists and turns before reaching the drawn position on move 44 that we looked at. Check this one out below:

Move of the Week

The Move of the Week goes to Angel C from Ánimo Leadership (Black) for this wonderful ending sequence.

This one starts with a check from the queen on d2.

The only move for the white king is to go to f1.

Check again, this time on f4.

The white king tries to escape to the corner.

Now Black’s rook gets involved with a check on d2.

The white king tries to find safety on h1.

But Black finds a great checkmate with the rook on h2!

Great work by Black here to find a checkmate while under pressure from White’s rooks.

This game was exciting from start to finish! Check the full game out below:

We are looking forward to an excellent week of chess this week and moving forward. Tune in this week for more amazing games! We will see you every Wednesday afternoon.

If there’s anything that you need help with this week please feel free to get in touch with Coach Matthias at Matthias@​rookly​.com.