Gens Una Sumus!
Yuri Shulman
1) Mechanics Institute Chess Club News
2) Kacheishvili wins Berkeley International
3) Anna Zatonskih annotates (Dresden Olympiad 2008)
4) David Knudson seeks Republican Nomination for Governor of South Dakota
5) Mark Diesen (1957-2008)
6) Hugh Myers (1930-2008)
7) Herman Chiu (1953-2008)
8) Here and There
El Cerrito GM and Mechanics' member Vinay Bhat will be playing in the Parsvnath Open in India from January 11 to 19.
MI member IM Sam Shankland scored 5 from 7 at the North American Open in Las Vegas over the holidays. His score, which included a win over IM Robert Hess and a draw with GM Jaan Ehlvest, raised his USCF rating to 2441 from 2425.
The Peoples' Open will be held over President's Day Weekend in Berkeley at its historic site the UC Berkeley Student Union. This year's event will be a four rounder (Sunday and Monday). Full details from organizer Richard Koepcke will soon be available.
The Continental Chess Association will be returning to Northern California this March with a big event in Concord. This will be the first major tournament in Contra Costa County since the 1996 US Open - incidentally held at the same hotel in Concord and also run by the CCA. See below under upcoming events for more information.
This Saturday the Mechanics will host the 9th Annual Bob Burger Open to recognize the well known Master, author and problem composer.
Top scores:
1. GM Kacheishvili (GEO, 2572) - 7½/10
2. GM Izoria (GEO, 2610) – 7
3-5. IM Friedel (USA, 2498), IM/WGM Krush (USA, 2452) and FM Rensch (USA, 2354) - 6
IM Anna Zatonskih (2440)
38th Olympia Dresden GER (8) 2008
Better known to chess players as the organizer of many Governor's Cup tournaments along with his wife De, the current South Dakota Senate majority leader said he has been considering running forgovernor for a long time because he is interested in public policy.
"I feel like South Dakota has got a lot of serious problems. We need to confront those problems head-on and look for solutions," Knudson said. "I see myself as a problem-solving kind of person."
Knudson, 58, is a lawyer who served two temporary terms as chief of staff for South Dakota Gov. Bill Janklow in 1995 and 1999. He first won a seat in the Senate in 2002 and is now serving his fourth term, which means he will be term-limited in the Senate in 2010.
He said his top priorities are making sure K-12 education is properly funded, reducing property taxes, and emphasizing economic development and the role technical education plays in development.
His wife, De Knudson, is a member of the Sioux Falls City Council.
The 2010 race for governor will be wide open because Gov. Mike Rounds is term-limited and cannot seek re-election.
Those who wish to support Dave Knudson can contact him at 2100 East Slaten Court, Sioux Falls, SD 57103.
Mark's progress up the junior ranks was fast and he was soon the second strongest player under 21 in the United States behind only Larry Christiansen who he finished second to in the 1973 and 1975 US Junior Closed events. Diesen broke through in 1976 tying for first in arguably the strongest US Junior Closed ever held (future GMs DeFirmian and Fedorowicz tied for last place) with Michael Rohde whom he defeated. This performance earned him the right to play in the World Junior Championship which he won. Mark's second, GM Lubos Kavalek, who coached him from 1975 to 1978, wrote a worthy tribute to the new champion in Chess Life and Review in the March and April 1977 issues. It was a very big deal as Mark had become, at that time, only the second US player after William Lombardy (1957) to win the title. Mark was on the cover of the March 1977 issue of Chess Life and Review as well as June 1976 where he and his fellow Washington Plumbers (Kavalek, Bill Hook, John Meyer, Larry Gilden, Bob Eberlein, Sam Greenlaw and the late Charles Powell) celebrated their victory in the US Chess League.
Winning the World Junior was good for a lot of tournaments invitations in the late 1970s and Mark soon became a globetrotter and full-time chess player. Between 1977 and 1980 he played in The Netherlands, Spain, England, Venezuela, Poland (twice) and Yugoslavia (many times). During this time he raised his FIDE rating over 2450 (the requirement for the GM title at the time) and earned one GM norm. Everything was going right for him to earn the title but then he had an accident at the 1980 US Championship in Greenville, Pennsylvania, which forced him to drop out of the event. This was to be Mark's last major tournament. Soon he went back to school graduating from the University of Tennessee with a degree in Chemical Engineering. He married and had children and worked as a reservoir engineer for Shell Oil, Pennzoil and Noble Energy. Mark returned to tournament play when he moved to Louisiana winning state titles there in 1986, 1987 and 1988. When he relocated to Texas in the early 1990s he won the Texas State Championship and Southwestern Open titles and was also active in coaching. This was particularly true online where he found a second chess life. Searching for his games in MegaData Base 2009 you will find that the fine "positional feel" that his old coach GM Kavalek had praised back in 1977, had not deserted Mark. There are numerous wins over strong GMs from this decade in blitz and rapid tournaments.
Hi,
I found an interesting web site, archive.org, that links to all kinds of archived material. Regarding chess, they have scans of full years o f various old BCM's, Westminster Chess, Chess Chronicles, etc.I am currently watching a very old movie I found there, "Scared Stiff," where Jack Haley (the Tin Man of Oz) is in a low-budget comedy. He's a chess-columnist who gets mixed up with hoodlums.
http://www.archive.org/details/Scared_Stiff
The new FIDE rating list has just been published. Topalov would be even higher if his victory in Nanjing in December had been counted on this list.
1. Topalov 2796
2. Anand 2791
3. Ivanchuk 2779
4. Carlsen 2776
5. Morozevich 2771
6. Radjabov 2761
7. Jakovenko 2760
8. Kramnik 2759
9. Leko 2751
10. Movsesian 2751
11. Aronian 2750
You will find an excellent biography of many-time Idaho state champion Glenn Buckendorf at http://www.idahochesshistory.com/Biographies/GBuckendorf.htm
We recently received the following message and would be grateful to any reader who can supply us with more information about the Third Saturday tournaments which have received little public reporting.
Message from GM Bogdan Lalic:
Hi, my friend grandmaster Sinisa Drazic told me to send this inquiry to your federation - he is organizing two tournaments in Novi Sad from 10th to 18th of January 2009 one is IM tournament and the other one is GM tournament, both are closed tournaments 10 players round robin. His e-mail is [email protected] and [email protected]
Please could you forward this e-mail to potential players interested to play in this tournament. Regards Bogdan Lalic.
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