Morning Membership Events Award 15 One-Year Membership Extensions in First Week

The US Chess Morning Membership Events which started this past Monday on Chess.com got off to a flying start with over 150 players participating in the 3 events throughout the week, which in turn meant awarding 15 lucky participants with one-year US Chess membership extensions!

The online rated blitz tournaments (4 round Swiss, G/5 +2/inc) are scheduled every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning and start at 11am Eastern/8am Pacific. The one-year US Chess memberships are awarded at random after each event based on the number of participants, one membership extension is awarded for every multiple of 10 players. Each event is completed in about one hour and is streamed on our Twitch Channel, including the drawing for the membership extensions and free entries into the next Morning Membership event.

61 players participated in the very first event last Monday, which was won by CM Joshua Altman and Sam Schenk, both with perfect scores. Sam also provided his own live stream as did Chess Life Editor John Hartmann. 61 players meant that 6 one-year membership extensions were awarded at random plus one free entry into Wednesday's event to cover the extra entry beyond the multiple of 10.

On Wednesday we had another 51 players participating in an event won solely by National Master Pieter Heesters who had the only perfect score. The 51 players meant that another 5 one-year membership extensions were awarded along with one free entry into Friday's event.

Friday's event had another 40 participants but would have had a few more if some players had thought about entering earlier instead of missing the 10am Eastern (one hour prior to the start of the event) registration cutoff. Future players beware! Arun Manukonda was the worthy winner of this event, finishing with the only perfect score and we also got a chance to check in with Miguel Garcia during his live stream. The nice round figure of 40 players meant that yet another 4 one-year membership extensions were awarded pushing the total to 15 for the week.

One of the fun aspects of the event from my perspective is the chance I get to stream it live and interact with the various players in the event, either in the Chess.com or Twitch chat. Of course I'm very careful to make sure I don't give too much away during my commentary of the games in case players are listening in. All of the feedback I have received is positive so far and players are appreciating the chance to play more US Chess rated chess given the frequent requests to hold more and at differing time controls. However, the real fun for me is the live drawing to award the memberships, with the players lucky number for each drawing based on their final position in the standings. You can literally feel the tension in the chat as players wait for MooBot to announce the winners.

Full details for the Morning Membership events can be found on our previous article announcing them but the short version is the entry fee is $5 per event and the registration link is https://www.events4chess.com/sponsors/?sponsor_ID=21. Details on how to get into the Chess.com Club and the tournament is provided upon registration for each event.

Many thanks go to Chess.com for providing the playing venue and their fair-play procedures and to Events 4 Chess who provide us with a very easy to use registration system for the events.