Friday, June 27, 2008

Thank you Palatine HS

It is official that we will be moving the 2008 Illinois All Grade Championships to Palatine HS. Mark Saturday, November 15th on your calendar. Tim Just and I did our final site visit yesterday, and this has the potential to be our finest scholastic event yet.

The tournament will take place in the gym, where there is a viewing area for parents and coaches from a mezzanine area with bleachers. The skittles room, book vendor, and food concessions will take place in the cafeteria which has room for about 600. Team rooms are nearby and available, feel free to contact me to arrange for one.

We are hoping to have flyers out, and our web site with registration up soon. I will post more details when available.

Glenn

Monday, June 23, 2008

Belated Good-bye

Last week I happened to stop by the Park Forest Chess Club on the way back home after traffic school. I hadn't seen several of the players there in quite a while, so it was nice to catch up. Late in the evening, I asked Larry Cohen if he had seen Bernie Ostrowsky ( a club member) at all recently. Larry was kind enough to send me the article on Bernie's passing that I have linked to below from 2 years ago.

http://nwitimes.com/articles/2006/04/07/lives_lived/lives_lived/48af8c22cef2f4d986257148007b939b.txt


I highly recommend reading the article for comedic value. This is what sometimes happens when a non-chess person writes about chess events. In this article our valiant hero Bernie provides valuable propaganda for the cold war by holding evil Soviet GM Samuel Reshevsky to a draw. Great stuff, this newpaper writer would have had a great career penning the script for Rocky IV (darn, they were 25 years too late for that).

I played Bernie in my very first tournament (lost to him), and ever since had one of those friendly chess acquaintanceships where you take the time to ask how the other is doing every time you see them at a tournament, and of course wish them good luck. Bernie was an eccentric dude, not like there aren't that many people like that in our pastime, but he loved people. People like Bernie make up the fabric of our tournaments and are missed even by those that only knew him casually.

Glenn