2006 Steinitz Swiss with McMahon pairings
With McMahon pairings, we all play in one big section, but the players are initially separated in classes by giving each class a number of bye points. Master/Experts start with 4 points, Class A 3, Class B 2, Class C 1 and Class D/E = 0. One way to look at the McMahon is to assume that we have already played 4 rounds in a normal Swiss, where you pair the top half against the bottom half and so on, and that there were no upsets. Then this is what the wall chart would look like after 4 rounds! With the McMahon, everyone plays someone close to their rating for most of the next 5 rounds, but you don't have the problem of an unequal number of players in 5 different sections. In other words you might have 11 B's and 11 C's in a strictly Class tournament and we might have people who could not play due to the odd number if we didn't have any house players for them. We could potentially need 5 house players with a Class tournament, and they would have to be of the right rating, so this is very difficult to do. This happens when we play the Class Championships at the end of the year. With the McMahon, the odd player would just be paired against the next closest person, and at most we only need one house player.
Expert John Funderburg
Round 1 - The lower rated player won 8 out of the top 11 boards and also drew one! These weren't big upsets, as the players were all within a hundred points of each other, thanks to McMahon pairings, but still it was a bit unusual. John Funderburg started it off with an upset win on Board 1 over Dimitry Kishinevsky. On Bd 2, Brad Salz managed to draw with the higher rated Alejandro Garamendi. The next 6 boards were all upsets: Bd 3 Ben Barquin over Alex Garcia-Betancourt, Bd 4 Mario Amodeo over Ramin Sinaee, Bd 5 David Delgadillo over Fawsi Murra Jr, Bd 6 Nate Plapp over Ron Soto, Bd 7 Dayne Freitag over Alfredo DeLeon and Bd 8 Jim Malowney over Chris Borgan. It took Buddy Morris on Bd 8 to break the string of wins for the lower rated players with a victory over Jerry Soelberg. Lennart Mathe also beat Fred Borges as predicted by ratings, but then Robert Henderson upset Chuck Ensey, in fact he crushed me like a bug.
The next 7 boards saw the higher rated player win: Luis Castaneda over Fausto Robles, Shaun Sweitzer over Anthony Harbone, Julian Rodriguez over Albert Anderson, Kevin Oakes over Karen Kaufman, Mayra Murra over Tom Kuhn, David Hall over Morgan Fox and Robert Samuel over Parviz Soltan. Then James Aranda upset Rocio Murra and Alex Burke upset Reno Tyrell.
The remaining games went as expected with Jacquelyn Egger winning over Monica Ness, Jason Flar over Dominic DeCesare, Jason Qu over Keith Wetterer and Mark Lawless over Maria Murra.
Ben Barquin recently went over 2000 to get to Expert status, for the second time in his career.
Round 2 - Ben Barquin (6) jumps into First Place with a win over John Funderburg (5). Brad Salz (5 1/2) is in Second Place after beating Carey Milton (4 1/2). In Third Place, tied with Funderburg, are Alex Garcia-Betancourt (5), Buddy Morris (5) and Dayne Freitag (5). Dayne beat Mario Amodeo (4), Buddy was victorious over Nathanael Plapp (4) and Alex won over Alejandro Garamendi (4 1/2).
Several players joined up in this round we now have 54 players, plus 4 players just playing only 1 or 2 rounds. Ed Baluran (4 1/2) got off on the right foot with a win over James Malowney (4). Ramin Sinaee (3) lost his second game in a row, this time to Tom Fries (4 1/2). Fawsi Murra Jr (3 1/2) and Lennart Mathe (3 1/20 drew.
Shaun Sweitzer (4) won his second game, beating up on Bob Draper (house player filling in for Chris Borgan). Bob Henderson (4) continued his winning ways by upsetting Alfredo Deleon (3). To see this game click on Cyrus Annotates. Jerry Soelberg (3 1/2) drew with Luis Castaneda (3 1/2).
Bob Defore (3 1/2) edged out Joel Batchelor (3) and Erik Marquis (3 1/2) upset Chuck Ensey (2). Fred Borges and Julian Rodriguez played, but no one posted the result, so I guess it is a double forfeit unless we hear from one of them very soon.
Fawsi Murra Sr (3) won his game with David Hall (2) and Fausto Robles (2) showed no mercy to Mayra Murra (2), a fellow "Mehicano". Kevin Oakes (3) toppled Anthony Harbone (2), who harbored no ill will. Jackie Egger (2) said "Let go of my Eggo" and won the point from Al Anderson (1). Mark Lawless (2) tripped up Tom Kuhn (1) on a point of law and secured the win. Jason Flar (2) fleeced Morgan Fox (1) and Parviz Soltan (2) lorded it over James Aranda (1) like a sultan. Jason Qu (1 1/2) drew with Alex Burke (1 1/2).
Rocio Murra (1) dominated Dominic DeCesare (0) while Reno Tyrell (1) played his best hand against Keith Wetterer (0). Monica Ness (1) won a very quick game with Maria Murra (0).
Expert Brad Salz in Club Championship earlier this year...
Round 3 - Brad Salz (6 1/2) took the lead by defeating Ben Barquin (6), who is alone in second place. Third place is crowded with 6 players, all with 5 1/2: John Funderburg, Alex Garcia-Betancourt, Buddy Morris, Dayne Freitag, Ed Baluran and David Delgadillo. The Thunderbird drew with the BudMan, Freitag drew with Betancourt, and also Alejandro Garamendi (5) drew with Tom Fries (5). James Malowney also has 5 points now after beating the redhot Robert Henderson (4). David Delgadillo upset Carey Milton (4 1/2) and the Balladeer (Baluran) won over Mario Amodeo (4). See Cyrus Annotates for this game
Nathanael Plapp (4 1/2) and Shaun Sweitzer (4 1/2) drew as did Bob Defore (4) and Fawsi Murra Jr (4). Also drawing were Ramin Sinaee (3 1/2) and Fred Borges (3 1/2). Quite a few draws! And that's not all of them, another one was Parviz Soltan (2 1/2) and Anthony Harbone (2 1/2). With the McMahon parings, players of similar strength are playing, so maybe draws are to be more common.
Some players did manage to win: Lennart Mathe (4 1/2) over Ron Soto (3 1/2), Chris Borgan (4 1/2) over Luis Castaneda (3 1/2) and Jerry Soelberg (4 1/2) over Erik Marquis (3 1/2). The Longest Game of the Night was won by Fawsi Murra Sr (4) over Alfredo DeLeon (3).
Joel Batchelor (4) won a game from Fausto Robles (3) in this third round, as did Jackie Egger (3) [Here is Jackie's tactical win ] from Julian Rodriguez (2) and Mark Lawless (3) from David Hall (2). Both Mayra Murra (3) and Rocio Murra (2) won their games and so did their madre Maria Murra (1). A good night for the Murra family, everyone won except for Junior, and he at least got a draw, which is good because he has been on a terrible losing streak and he is the highest rated in the family... Everyone seems to play a "Best Game" against him. Kind of like the Padres??
Also winning were Morgan Fox (2), Chuck Ensey (3), Tom Kuhn (2), Caley Anderson (1 1/2) and Robert Samuel (house player this time). See the message board for Caley's game and interesting annotations!
Taking byes were Kevin Oakes (3 1/2), Karen Kaufman (2), James Aranda (1 1/2), Monica Ness (1 1/2) and Albert Anderson (1 1/2).
Round 4
[Andrew Bell]
I stopped by the club to watch a few games and saw a couple interesting positions that I captured:
Delgadillo apparently forgot to hit the clock after his 40th move and his flag fell soon thereafter. Funderburg called the flag and Delgadillo got somewhat animated in his ire (unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, I was busy outplaying Rick Aeria in the courtyard while this occurred).
Other games of note:
The top board of Salz - Betancourt was a curious game. Alex opened too casually (misplayed Austrian attack vs. a Pirc) and gave Salz lasting initiative and a semi-exposed king to attack all game. Alex was resourceful and, through luck or a brilliant "rope-a-dope" strategy, Salz's accuracy began to diminish and he put himself in time trouble. He later blundered a back rank mate in time trouble when he had a draw in hand. This game was heavily and audibly analyzed afterward by masters and experts who had spotted all sorts of wins.
Plapp beat Mathe with a nicely posted knight and a powerful passer.
Borgan was in some trouble vs. Sweitzer but Shaun let him off the hook and then made some missteps in the endgame (2 Knights + 5 pawns each) and lost. Chris played a great endgame to be fair.
Garamendi won quickly but then started to lose blitz games to Rick outside. Rocio claimed that the Murra family scored 3 points in total, so their night was net positive. Corper came by looking for some software and seemed a little chafed that Rick didn't bring said 'ware. Corper must be happy with England's performance today...I'm sure he has forgotten this setback.
One final item of note was that Chuck was wearing shorts for what seemed to be the first time ever. I later learned that he was headed to Spain today for vacation. If Chuck had hoped to get a head start on a uniform tan, I'm afraid he came up a little shy. [end AB]
[Well, that's why I need to go to Spain - to get a tan! I admit my legs are as white as Casper The Ghost...but the shorts were lucky for me as I won in 14 moves... See game here. I will come back with reports on any chess sightings in Spain, the home of Ruy Lopez. - CE] Other players that won last night before I left early were Keith Wetterer, Monica Ness, Jason Qu, Theron Pummer, Fausto Robles and Ramin Sinaee.
Round 5
Final Results
Expert Section John Funderburg, Ben Barquin 1st-2nd, Alex Garcia-Betancourt 3rd
Class A Section Buddy Morris, Nathanael Plapp, Ed Baluran 1st-3rd
Class B Section Fawsi Murra Sr, Shawn Sweitzer 1st-2nd, Joel Batchelor, Fausto Robles 3rd
Class C Section Kevin Oates 1st, Tom Kuhn 2nd, Mayra Murra 3rd
Class D Section: Mark Lawless 1st, Jason Qu, Rocio Murra, Jacquelyn Egger 2nd-3rd
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