Scheduling Note

Today is the penultimate match of the Green Dot Summer League! The league is scheduled to run through to Wednesday, June 17th. Good luck in the second to last match day.

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, June 10th, starting at 3:45 PM. Over the past few weeks the Rookly Green Dot League has continued 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 this week goes to Angel C from Ánimo Leadership (White) and Julian R from Ánimo Florence-Firestone (Black) for this nail-biter of a game with an awesome finish.

We join this game on move 27 with White to move. White has a material advantage and is still in a winning position, but, only one move in this position maintains the advantage. Which is the best move?

In the game, White moved the king to f1. Right piece; wrong square. White should have moved to d1 instead!

Before we get back to the game (and why Kf1 doesn’t work), let’s take a look at why Kd1 does work.

Black can follow up with a check from the queen on g4…

…but White can conveniently block on e2 with the knight.

If black tries to attack White’s rook on e1…

…White can fork Black’s king and rook and neutralize the threat, and continue the game with a large material advantage.

Let’s get back to the real game. White played Kf1, remember?

The white king is now very exposed. Can you find the winning continuation for Black?

Did you spot rook to f2 checkmate? Queen to f2 is also mate!

Great game by both players! White was in the driver’s seat for almost the entire game, but Black found this nice winning sequence at the end. You can check this one out in full below.

Move of the Week

The Move of the Week this week comes courtesy of Pedro R from Ánimo Pat Brown (White) who finished this game in style by promoting a pawn on g8 and landing checkmate in the same move.

This resulted in the very cool move notation g8=Q#, which is not something you see every day!

What a great finish to a fun game overall. You can check it out in full 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.