Chess Room Newsletter #438

Bent Larsen in Chess Horizons, January-February 1990, p. 27.

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1) Mechanics Institute Chess Club News
2) Shulman-Akobian match in Northern California
3) U.S. State Champion of Champions: The Final Four by John Henderson
4) 3rd Ray Schutt Memorial Blitz Tournament
5) Supernationals III in Nashville by Michael Aigner
6) Bay Area Chess Regional Grade-level Chess Championship in Santa Clara by Ted Castro

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Oleg Shaknazarov, William Gray, Igor Traub and Hayk Manveleyan are leading the 65-player Spring Tuesday Night Marathon with perfect scores after three rounds.

IM Ricardo DeGuzman won the 9th Annual Max Wilkerson G/45, reeling off four consecutive victories after taking a first round bye. Sharing second place with 4 from 5 in the 48-player event were IM Cyrus Lakdawala, NM Michael Aigner and Class A player Martin Marshall.

Here are the last round games from the top two boards. 1.Nf3 Nc6 2.c4 e5 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.g3 d5 5.cxd5 Nxd5 6.d3 Be6 7.Bg2 Be7 8.0-0 0-0 9.Bd2 Kh8 10.a3 f5 11.Rc1 Bf6 12.Nxd5 Bxd5 13.Bc3 Nd4 14.Bxd4 exd4 15.Nd2 Bxg2 16.Kxg2 Qd5+ 17.Kg1 c5 18.Qb3 Qxb3 19.Nxb3 b6 20.Rc2 Rfe8 21.Kg2 Re7 22.a4 Rae8 23.Re1 g5 24.h3 Kg7 25.a5 Kg6 26.Kf1 h5 27.Nd2 Re6 28.axb6 axb6 29.b4 cxb4 30.Rc4 g4 31.hxg4 hxg4 32.Rxb4 Rh8 33.Kg2 Rhe8 34.Nc4 Rxe2 35.Rxe2 Rxe2 36.Rxb6 Rc2 37.Nd6 Rc7 38.Ne8 Rf7 39.Rd6 Kg5 40.Nxf6 Rxf6 41.Rxd4 and 1-0 ....when Black went astray in severe time pressure. 1.Nf3 c6 2.c4 d5 3.cxd5 cxd5 4.d4 Nc6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Bf4 Nf6 7.Rc1 e6 8.e3 Nh5 9.Bg5 Qb6 10.Nd2 Nf6 11.Na4 Qa5 12.Bxf6 gxf6 13.a3 Qd8 14.Be2 Bd6 15.0-0 0-0 16.Nc5 Ne7 17.Rc3 b6 18.Nd3 Bd7 19.e4 Qb8 20.g3 dxe4 21.Nxe4 Nd5 22.Qd2 Kg7 23.Rcc1 Ra7 24.Bf3 Bb5 25.Nc3 Nxc3 26.Rxc3 Rc8 27.Rfc1 Rac7 28.Nb4 Rxc3 29.Rxc3 Rxc3 30.Qxc3 Qc7 31.Nc6 Bxc6 ½-½ MI member GM Vinay Bhat tied for 19th in the recent Reykjavik Open with 5.5 from 9. US Champion Yury Schulman was among the leaders throughout and ended on 6.5 for 6th place on tiebreak in the 110 player field.

Thanks to Peter Sherwood for donating new board plastic numbers to replace the old, well-used, beer coasters previously employed.

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California's #1 rated player, GM Varuzhan Akobian will meet U.S. Champion GM Yury Shulman in a four day rapid match with a blitz finale . The two members of the 2008 Olympiad bronze medalist team, will meet in the California's First GrandMaster Invitational World Class Chess Event from April 22nd-25th 2009 in Lake County, California.

Organizer of this event is Thomas Southerland and the venue is Robinson Rancheria Resort and Casino in Nice, California, - about a two hour drive from San Francisco. The match will be shown live on the official site www.chessmastered.com and on the pages of www.chessdom.com

Schedule

Day 1 ( April 22): Two rapid games (G30) starting at 11:00 and 12:30

Day 2 (April 23): Two rapid games (G30) starting at 11:00 and 12:30

Day 3 (April 24): Two rapid games (G30) starting at 11:00 and 12:30

Day 4 (April 25): Ten blitz games (5 min) starting at 12:00

Note that these event ties in well with Mike Goodall's 4th Annual Frank Doyle Open, held April 25-26, in Santa Rosa, (see details below) about an hour away.

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After a competitive day on the Internet Chess Club that saw 29 state champions from Alaska, Hawaii through California to Washington, and from Maine through to Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Texas and Tennessee, the U.S. State Champion of Champions tournament reaches the Final Four.

The two zonal tournaments in both the Eastern and Western Conferences produced some epic battles and a couple of runaway winners. All the early action came in the Western Conference, where the first to qualify was the youngest competitor Sam Shankland from North California, who top-scored on 9.5/10 to dominate his zonal tournament. Next up was John Bryant of Southern California, who scored 8.5/10 in the other zonal to also book his place in the finals.

But it was a different story in the Eastern Conferences, with two extremely close zonal battles. Connecticut top seed GM Sergey Kudrin found the going tough in a three-way showdown for the top spot alongside Mackenzie Molner of New Jersey and IM James Rizzitano of Massachusetts. In the end though, age and guile proved no match for youth and speed, as Molner took the top spot ahead of the two veterans by a narrow margin.

And there was a more dramatic battle in the second zonal, which went to a playoff, as FM Ronald Simpson of North Carolina tied for first place on 11.5/13 with Dov Gorman of Virginia, with Simpson winning the playoff, 2-0, to reach the finals.

Next Saturday, April 4th, with independent proctors in place at each venue to ensure fair-play, and an extended time control of two G25min + 10sec games (and blitz playoffs, if needed), ICC will host the Final Four with Molner vs. Simpson for the Eastern Conference title and Shankland vs. Bryant for the Western Conference title; the winners then meeting on Sunday, April 5th, to play for the title of U.S. State Champion of Champions and round-trip ticket and final qualifying spot for the 2009 U.S. Championship, hosted by the Scholastic Center and Chess Club of St. Louis, Missouri.

Go to U.S. State Champion of Champions page for crosstable of results and to download all zonal tournament games.

Further information:
John B. Henderson
ICC Director of Chess Content
Tel: 847-347-9593
E-mail: [email protected]

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A chance to remember and pay tribute to an old friend
May 10th (Sunday) at the Mechanics' Institute.

When: Sunday, May 10th from 1 to 5 pm. The blitz tournament will be held from 2 to 4 pm. There will be a chance to reminiscence about Ray over light refreshments both before and after the event.

Where: Mechanics' Institute, 57 Post St, San Francisco (Montgomery BART)

Format: Five Double-Round Swiss or Roundrobin depending on entries.

Prizes ( guaranteed):
1st $300
2nd $200
3rd $100
4th $75
5th $50
6th $25

Entry Fee: $10. Free to IMs and GMs. Enter at tournament from 1pm to 1:45. Entries close at 1:45 pm please take note. No phone entries. Come honor Ray's memory and help make this the largest and strongest blitz tournament in the history of Northern California chess!

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The following excerpt from March 25 comes from Michael's excellent blog at http://fpawn.blogspot.com.

This is the Big Dance. And I mean BIG. Nearly 4800 players have registered with a week to go and I expect to see up to 5500 kids total. An unofficial world record of 5373 was set in 2005 at Supernationals III in the same venue. The entire humongous resort is sold out, all 2881 rooms. In fact, with a healthy economy, the record would already be history.

The seniors on the Saratoga High School Chess Team and I were there in 2005. Four seniors are joined this year by one junior and three freshmen This year's squad of Jeff Young, Charles Sun, Brian Wai, Aaron Garg and Evan Ye will be slightly higher rated than the one that took 3rd in 2006, but still seeded only about 7th or 8th (1881 average of the top 4) in the incredibly difficult High School division--14 masters and about 45 experts at the top of a wallchart of more than 335 players. The top ranked team from Stuyvesant High School (New York City) has IM Robert Hess, who just last week earned a GM norm by winning the Spiece Spring Invitational and three experts for a whopping 2177 average. This year for the first time, Saratoga High also fields a team in the K-12 U1600 section: Alex Lun, Avinash Kumar and Sankash Shankar.

The entire Northern California Delegation consists of 40 players right now, but I know of three who have not yet registered. Five more of my proteges will attend, for a total of over a dozen students. Two more are in the K-12 section and one will compete in each of the K-8, K-6 and K-5 sections. In Fremont, Mission San Jose Elementary has put together a powerful team (Jerome Sun, James Kwok, Hemang Jangle and Arman Kalyanpur) ranked tops in K-6 at 1739, nearly 200 points above the elite New York City schools. Can the California boys shock the nation and win Elementary School nationals? Finally, I received late word that 2007 National High School Champion Michael Zhong will be attending for an encore.

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Last Saturday, March 28, BAY AREA CHESS held its Regional Grade-level Chess Championship in Santa Clara Convention Center with about 166 kids flocked and played in this celebrated event which serves as a warm-up for the State Championship. Several kids played up in higher grade level to have stronger competition. Some of my students who did well in the tournament were the following --

GRADE 9-12 - Tanuj Vasudeva (solo first!) - this kid is only 2nd graderVignesh P. (3rd place) this kid is only 3rd grader and only lost to Tanuj
Both are my private students.

GRADE 7-8 - Brian Chao (tied for first)student from a group class

GRADE 6 - Arvind Sankar (solo first)
private student

GRADE 5 - Austin Chen (solo first) private student
Daniel Ho (2nd place) group class
Justin Wang (tied for 4th) private student

GRADE 3 - Jeffrey Tao (tied for first) private student
Joseph Zhang (tied for first) private student

GRADE 2 - Anirudh Seela (tied for 2nd) private student
Desiree Ho (tied for 2nd) group class