And so it begins...

Hello there!

This is Edwin Dizon, friend of Eddie Chang and unofficial blogger for the Seattle Sluggers (why I'm not sure).

Small background on me is that I played chess back in high school, managed to be one of the better players in my grade level (not sure how), and after HS managed the Seattle HS Metro Chess league for about 10 years. Honestly when it comes to chess now, I'm on the outside looking in.

I'm interested to see how this league goes as this concept is rather interesting. When I was in college at Seattle U, we participated in a USCF collegiate internet chess league and it definitely was interesting to play against other colleges (even if at the time there were only 4 of us). Of course this league is something for the big shots around the country.

After perusing the site a little since I've been given this blogger status, there are a couple of things I'd like to comment on:

1) Unbalanced schedule - When NM Sharma was referring to intangibles, there was the mention of a harder schedule. This seemed a bit puzzling to me, so I went to the schedule. Specifically, I wonder how teams within the division either play once or twice. There are 10 weeks in the season and no byes. So why can't the teams play against each other in their divisions twice, once as white and once as black? Seems pretty simple to me. Otherwise, if you're going to have 10 weeks and play against teams in the other division, play 11 weeks instead, have a round-robin format and conglomerate everyone into one division.

2) Seattle's chip on its shoulder - As much as Seattleites may be nice and courteous, we resent the fact that for the most part we're ignored (ex. 2007 Mariners, Seahawks, all of Pac-10 if you want to include the west coast as well). So when we think we're slighted we tend to take it personally. Which is why when Seattle was ranked to finish 4th in the division, Eddie ended up taking it the way he did and from a glance of the prognostications and prior results, I might have done the same.

But as they say, "that's why we play the game", ne?