Markowski 06 Rd 3

1/18/2006, The Markowski Open, Round 3, Reported by Chuck Ensey,  Rick Aeria and Bruce Baker

Six Players with Perfect Scores of 3

84 Players in all fight for the 30 qualifying spots (14 Open, 16 Reserve)

  

NM Ruffo ("El Fabuloso") Orihuela took a bye in Rd 1, but now has 2 wins in a row and is a threat to win it all

NM Bruce Baker, NM David Hart, NM Adam Corper, Dimitry Kishinevsky, Alex Garcia-Betancourt and Nikolay Arutyunov are the only players to post perfect 3-0 scores so far. They will all play each other next week and so my math tells me that next week we will only have 3 players at most with perfect scores. The process of selection and winnowing may have already begun, although with 4 rounds left no one is really eliminated YET. However several top players were considering withdrawing after losses last night, but we all did our best to talk them out of it. It is easy to get depressed after a tough loss and throw in the towel, but we'd really like to see ALL the players finish ALL the rounds. For one thing, it is so great to see the club completely full of chess players! Is this the greatest club or what??!!  Next weeks' provisional pairings on the top boards are Kishinevsky - Baker, Arutyunov - Hart, Corper - Betancourt. And in the 2 1/2 point group it will be (assuming no one takes a bye) Bruno - Sainz, Crisologo - Orihuela, Aeria - Garamendi, Gimeno - Delgadillo.

There were a fair number of upsets in Round 3, starting on board 2, where Alex Garcia-Betancourt upset Robert Richard, (2) who has been concentrating on writing a book lately about the early interactions between man and wolves, and how some of those wolves evolved to become man's best friend, the dog. Bob was bitten by a hungry dog last night in the form of Alex Garcia-Betancourt, who managed to find his way through the maze of complications to win a tricky endgame. As we mentioned last week, it is not easy to beat a master (especially one as resourceful as Bob Richard! -RA), even when you are up a lot of material. As someone once said of Alexander Alekhine, to win a game from him you have to win the same game 3 times - once in the opening, once again in the middle game and for a third time in the ending! Slip up anywhere along the way and you are dead meat. Reminds me of the movie "The Outlaw Josey Wales" (1976) where all these low-lifes tried to take out the famous gunslinger at different points in the movie, but Josey Wales, as played by Clint Eastwood, would always outfox them.

  "Feeling lucky, punk?" (Dirty Harry) or "A man's got to know his limitations..." (Josey Wales)     

Another upset was scored by Nikolay Arutyunov over Leonard Sussman (2). Nikolay is only provisionally rated, so we don't know for sure how good he is, but it appears that he is very likley an Expert! Lenny thought he was winning the game at one point, but made a big mistake and the game went downhill fast from there.

 

 

 

Another quote from Josey Wales: "Now remember, things look bad and it looks like you're not gonna make it, then you got to get mean, I mean plumb mad-dog mean. 'Cause if you lose your head and then you give up, then you neither live nor win. That's just the way it is." 

And my favorite: Ten Bears: These things you say we will have, we already have. Josey Wales: That's true. I ain't promising you nothing extra. I'm just giving you life and you are giving me life. And I'm saying that men can live together without butchering each other. Ten Bears: It's sad that governments are chiefed by the double tongues. There is iron in your words of death for all Comanche to see, and so there is iron in your words of life. No signed paper can hold the iron. It must come from men. The words of Ten Bears carries the same iron of life and death. It is good that warriors such as we meet in the struggle of life .... or death. It shall be life.    

 

Players with 2 points include FM Richard Russell and Class A player Phillip Roth, both shown above in Round 3. In the background behind Roth is January's Player of the Month-Elect, Esteban ("Scooby-Doo") Escobedo

Others with 2, likely to be paired next week: Robert Richard - Thomas Fries, Ron Rezendes - Leonard Sussman, John Funderburg - James Malowney, Buddy Morris - Carey Milton, Brad Salz - Joel Batchelor, Dayne Freitag - Maksim Gusev, Fred Borges - Fawsi Murra Jr, Ed Baluran - Luis Castaneda.    

 

LOS AMIGOS

NM Ruffo "El Fabuloso" Orihuela, Estaban "Scooby-Doo" Escobedo with man of the hour Luis "Little Looie" Castaneda.    Picture courtesy of Rick Aeria

The next upset came from Luis Castaneda (2), who knocked off Mario Amodeo (1). Luis has been steadily improving lately. He won the Class B trophy at the Class Championships late last year. Class B players are very dangerous to higher rated players, because they are quite capable of playing like an Expert for long stretches, but every once in a while, they will blunder like a Class C player, and that's the only thing that holds them back (in my opinion, myself being a long time Class B player). Here is a position from Luis' game. Note the leather chess board, which is his specialty. He also has boards with "San Diego Chess Club" inscribed on the side, they are quite nice.

Julian Rodriquez (1 1/2), another up and coming Class B player managed to earn a draw with strong Class A player Ron Soto (1 1/2), which was a bit of an upset. Also getting a draw from a higher rated player was Keith Wilson (1 1/2), who nearly won the game from Gary Tuttle (1 1/2). Gary was in a bit of time trouble before move 40, and was a pawn down for most of the game, but was able to secure a draw with excellent play late in the end game.

 

Keith Wilson nearly won this game with the Black pieces. Meanwhile Karen Kaufman fought Dayne Freitag right down to the late endgame too before finally tipping over her King.

Mayra Murra (1) upset Parviz Soltan (0), who was quite gallant in defeat, heaping praise on his opponent for the well played game. All other games went according to the predicted result from the ratings, which are starting to narrow now, but are still 200 points or so in many cases. In the last four rounds, players will be playing people much closer to their own rating, and that should make for lots of exciting games. Remember to give your game to Bruce or me if you think it is "web-worthy" and we will post it here. Don't be shy!

 

Monica Ness makes a move while Mayra Murra plays Soltan in the background and Jackie Egger (formerly Jackie Malowney, sorry guys, she's now married) plays Morgan Fox.       

 

Jackie gave Morgan a real battle. She's a little rusty from a long hiatus from chess and she made just one bad move that cost her the game. But watch out, she has a Class A coach in her father James Malowney, who was happy to see her come back to the club.