Gens Una Sumus!
Mechanics’ Institute Chess Club Newsletter #787
May 26, 2017
In all the time I’ve been with Fischer, in no way did he impress me as a person with great savvy. The one thing that can be said, he has a great curiosity about puzzles. He plays pinball machines. He is fascinated with games. He has a puzzle mentality, which is absolutely murderous in any type of competition.
—Jude Acers, talking about Bobby Fischer,
who he spent several days with in 1964.
Ann Arbor News, July 11, 1976
1) Mechanics’ Institute Chess Club News
The Summer Tuesday Night Marathon is off to an impressive start. Among the 104 participants who have already entered are five players rated over 2260, led by Spring TNM winner Tenzing Shaw (2310). The triple-digit attendance marks the 14th consecutive event the TNM has reached the century mark. It’s not too late to enter with a half-point bye for round one.
From round 1 of the Summer Tuesday Night Marathon:
 |  |
| White to move (Winslow–Tuck after 25...Rxe4) | White to move (Tracy–Mines after 22...f6) |
 |  |
| White to move (Poling–Kim after 18...Kd7) | White to move (Smith–Garfield after 27...Kf8) |
 |  |
| Black to move (Marquez–Acharya after 26 Rf1) | White to move (Erickson–King after 5...h6) |
| For the solutions, see the game scores for round 1. |
National Master Conrado Diaz won the 17th Charles Powell Memorial, held May 6 at the Mechanics’ Institute Chess Club, with a 5–0 score. Joe Tracy, who lost to Diaz in the last round, shared second place at 4–1 with National Master Romy Fuentes. The result has Tracy’s rating back over 2100 and he is once again rated among the top 90 players age 65 and older in the United States. 33 players participated in the monthly event
The 11th Annual Ray Schutt Blitz, held May 7, may have attracted the largest field ever for a stand-alone (not connected with a major tournament like a World or U.S. Open) blitz tournament held in the United States. 79 players, including two Grandmasters, three International Masters and 14 National Masters, competed in the six-double-round Swiss.
A partial view of the playing hall in the 11th Ray Schutt Blitz (Photo: Kerry Lawless)
Remarkably, fewer than a dozen of the participants were under 21, due to the concurrent 12th Annual Susan Polgar Foundation National Open for Boys and Girls held in Livermore. Factor in this, a scheduling conflict with the Berkeley Chess Club, and a partial closure of BART between Fruitvale and Lake Merritt, and the tournament could have had well over 100 participants. As it was, this event was a fitting memory to National Master Ray Schutt, who won the 1998 U.S Senior Championship, beating Grandmaster Eduard Gufeld 2–0 in a blitz playoff.
Top seeds Grandmasters Daniel Naroditsky and Conrad Holt (newly settled in the Bay Area and working for Google) tied for first with 10–2 scores, but they did not have it easy. Naroditsky went 1–1 against National Masters Derek O’Connor and Conrado Diaz in rounds 3 and 4, and Holt lost to Senior Master Arun Sharma (½–1½) and dropped a half-point to International Master Yian Liou along the way.
The ever-active and well-known blitz aficionado National Master Conrado Diaz was alone in third at 9½ with Liou, FIDE Master Paul Whitehead, National Master Daniel Schwarz and Expert Carlos D’Avila on 9. They tied for fourth and divided the last cash prizes. Just below them were Sharma (who was the only player to face both Grandmasters), International Master Vladimir Mezentsev and O’Connor, who has made a big jump in strength the past few months.
Long-time M.I. Sunday Women’s chess class instructor Ewelina Krubnik decided to play for the first in over half a dozen years and beat National Master Michael Aigner 1½–½ in the first round. Aigner bounced right back scoring 7 out of 8 before losing to Diaz ½–1½ in the money round.
A good time was had by all thanks to the generosity of the Schutt family, who once again sponsored the tournament and put on a huge spread of food. This is the 11th year in a row they have done this.
The Mechanics’ Chess Club would like to thank Jules Jelinek, Renate Otterbach and Vladimir Naroditsky for their help in making the tournament run smoothly.
The crosstable for this event can be found at https://chessclub.org/archive.php?y=2017&t=club-events&e=x07.Schutt17Standings
Over fifty photos from the tournament can be found at ChessDryad - http://www.chessdryad.com/photos/sanfran/schutt2017/index.htm
2) A Chess Poem from National Master Dennis Fritzinger
avalanche hour
not thinking, i relied
on emotional bookmarks
hoping they would steer me right.
wrong.
they offered an illusion,
like a mountain covered with snow
at 3:30, avalanche hour.
tearing up the side
of the mountain,
i made my move.
it was then the avalanche informed me
i had made a mistake,
and down came my position
and me with it.
National Master Dennis Fritzinger studying his position during the 11th Ray Schutt Blitz. (Photo: Kerry Lawless)
3) The Readers Write
First International Arbiter Walter Brown Jr. writes,
That was an excellent article you wrote on Walter Shipman (Editor—Newsletter #782). You mentioned that it would be hard to beat his record at earning his IM title at the age of 52. I did some checking and Joe Bradford made his last norm when he was 56½ and Ilye Figler made his first norm when he was 51 and his last norm when he was 63.
Speaking of players attaining titles at an older age, noted New York chess teacher and book seller Fred Wilson tied for third at 3–1 behind Grandmasters Alexander Stripunsky and Mackenzie Molnar in the Dr. David Ostfeld Memorial held May 7 in Hackensack, New Jersey. The result leaves the 71-year-old Wilson, who has never been a USCF-rated master, at 2198.
Bill Goichberg writes about Sammy Reshevsky’s dentist, Dr. Samuel Greenberg. (see Newsletter #762). “You might be interested in the game I played against Dr. Greenberg in the Manhattan Chess Club Championship Preliminaries in 1962.”
Queen’s Gambit Semi Slav D46
Bill Goichberg–Samuel Greenberg
New York 1962
1. d4 d5 2c4 e6 3 Nc3 Nf6 4 Nf3 c6 5 e3 Nbd7 6 Bd3 Bd6 7 O-O O-O 8 e4 dxe4 9 Nxe4 Nxe4 10 Bxe4 Nf6 11 Bc2 g6 12 Bg5 Be7 13 Qe2 Qc7 14 Rad1 Bd7 15 a3 Nh5 16 Bh6 Ng7 17 Rfe1 Bf6 18 Ne5 Rfe8 19 Qf3 Bxe5 20 dxe5 Nf5 21 Bg5 c5 22 g4 Ng7 23 Bf6 h6 24 Qh3 Kh7 25 Re3 Rh8
26 Qxh6+! Kxh6 27 Rh3+ Nh5 28 Rxh5+ gxh5 29 g5# 1-0
4) 1987 San Jose Masters/Experts Open
Continuing our tradition of publishing crosstables that pre-date the US Chess MSA (which started September 1991) and were not published in any magazines, we offer this strong local weekender.
5) This is the end
Another simple study.
White to move
Show solution
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