Gambito #380

Gambito #380   7/19/08

notes by Chuck Ensey

The noise and parking problems are some of things we've learned to deal with over the years on this special Gay Pride Parade Day when Balboa Park is jammed with party goers. It didn't stop 19 brave souls from showing up and doing their best to create magic on the chessboard.

Thanks to Joseph Serapilia for filling in as a house player to even out the pairings. As TD, I had to take a bye in the first round when we had an odd number of entrants and no available house players. So having Joseph there allowed me to play in the next 3 rounds. He is unrated and lost all of his games, but he is a fairly good player, he just lacks experience. For instance, in Round 3, he kept expecting Fred Cleveland's time to run out, not understanding about the 5 seconds of time delay that are added to every move with digital clocks. "His clock's not moving!!" he complained to the crowd watching the game. We then explained about the delay and a few seconds later, in the heat of battle, he cried out in dismay: "Well, what's the point of having a clock then?!!". Afterwards he was fine with it and was happy to be gaining experience at tournament play. By the way, Fred always uses a lot of time, but he is getting very good a using that 5 second delay. Last week I saw him beat someone else while living off the time delay. He might have learned that trick from Dimitry Kishinevsky, another time delay expert... And where is Dimitry these days, we haven't seen him recently...   Cyrus and Bruce also took the day off today.  

To battle the noise we gave the players an extra five minutes on their clocks: G/45 with 5 second delay instead of the usual G/40. Nobody complained... 

 

Varun Krishnan had another impressive day, beating Expert Eric Montany in Round 1 and poster boy (of the Reader) Alan Tsoi in Round 2. Alan took a picture with his camera phone of the wall chart after the first round that showed him leading the tournament (because Peter Graves had been held to a draw by Daniel Grazian, plus Carey Milton drew with Richard Jensen). So Alan and Varun were paired on Board 1 for the second round! It was "way cool" for the younger set...

Varun beat Alan and then was paired with FIDE Master Richard Russell who joined after a first round bye. I believe Varun was winning the game at one point amazingly enough, given Richard's lofty rating. An exciting game that I hope we can post here soon... Also see the message board for Rick Aeria's comments on the game.

Then in the last round Varun was held to a draw by Roberto Aiello, resulting in a logjam of players with 3 1/2 points (see below). Roberto, like Varun, had also upset Eric Montany. Tough day for Eric, but he is very resiliant and will bounce back next time. Chess can be humbling... Roberto lost an easily won game against Alan Tsoi when up a full piece but he failed to make a critical move to stop Alan's passed pawn and it was able to Queen. The move f5! blocked the Bishop from the saving square. I saw it all coming and could only watch in horror (kibitzers see everything). Ouch, that's got to hurt, or I guess I could say, "That's going to leave a mark!". Sorry, Roberto, but if it is any consolation, I was up a piece against Carey and also failed to win - but with Carey that happens all the time!  

Note that the following prizes were pooled between 6 players: U2200 $50, U2000 $50, 2nd Place $20, 2nd U2000 $30, so $150 total/6 =$25 each. There was a 2nd place U2000 because of the large number of Class A players. The U1600 prize was reduced to $10 due to there being just 1 Class C player.

We used a mini-McMahon pairing system as there were only 13 players initially: M/E/A = 1, B/C = 0. Six more players joined after round 1, giving us a final tally of 2 Masters, 4 Experts, 9 Class A, 3 Class B, 1 Class C. 

Wall Chart            event is rated

	Name/Rtng/ID	Rd 1	Rd 2	Rd 3	Rd 4	Rd 5
2	Peter Graves	bye	W 8	B 11	B 5	W 10
	2306  2307  1st Place/U2400* $75	1	1쩍	2쩍	3쩍	4쩍
1	Richard Russell	bye	bye	B 8	W 9	B 4
	2356  2362  1st Place/U2400* $75	1	1쩍	2쩍	3쩍	4쩍
9	Varun Krishnan	bye	W 3	B 7	B 1	W 14
	1944  1972  U2200/2000* $25	1	2	3	3	3쩍
14	Roberto Aiello	bye	W 7	B 17	W 3	B 9
	1871  1891  U2200/2000* $25	1	1	2	3	3쩍
6	Carey Milton	bye	W 13	B 15	B 4	W 5
	2033  2038  U2200/2000* $25	1	1쩍	2쩍	2쩍	3쩍
4	Leonard Sussman	bye	bye	B 12	W 6	W 1
	2097  2105  U2200/2000* $25	1	1쩍	2쩍	3쩍	3쩍
10	Robert Defore	bye	bye	B 20	W 7	B 2
	1933  1942  U2200/2000* $25	1	1쩍	2쩍	3쩍	3쩍
15	Chuck Ensey	bye	bye	W 6	B 16	W 8
	1821  1843 U2200/2000* $25	1	1쩍	1쩍	2쩍	3쩍
7	Alan Tsoi	bye	B 14	W 9	B 10	W 17
	1958  1949	1	2	2	2	3
3	Eric Montany	bye	B 9	W 16	B 14	W 13
	2117  2098	1	1	2	2	3
8	Daniel Grazian	bye	B 2	W 1	W 12	B 15
	1944  1946	1	1쩍	1쩍	2쩍	2쩍
13	Richard Jensen	bye	B 6	W 5	W 11	B 3
	1893  1898	1	1쩍	1쩍	2쩍	2쩍
5	Rick Aeria	bye	bye	B 13	W 2	B 6
	2099  2089	1	1쩍	2쩍	2쩍	2쩍
11	James Mahooti	bye	bye	W 2	B 13	W 12
	1918  1914	1	1쩍	1쩍	1쩍	2쩍
16	Nestor Dagamat	----	W 18	B 3	W 15	B 19
	1661  1666  U1800* $17	0	1	1	1	2
17	Jessica Lauser	----	B 19	W 14	B 18	B 7
	1647  1652  U1800* $17	0	1	1	2	2
18	Anthony Harbone	----	B 16	W 19	W 17	B 20
	1613  1600  U1800* $17	0	0	1	1	2
12	Jason Qu	bye	bye	W 4	B 8	B 11
	1906  1882	1	1쩍	1쩍	1쩍	1쩍
19	Fred Cleveland	----	W 17	B 18	W 20	W 16
	1251  1242  U1600 $10	0	0	0	1	1
20	Joseph Seripelia	bye	----	W 10	B 19	W 18
	unr.  850/03	쩍	쩍	쩍	쩍	쩍

Total Prizes $360                            *tie