Steven Tennant, I am calling you out

Last weekend, I was relaxing after my Orland Scholastic with my good friend Theo Poulos and NM Dr. Steven Tennant. To those of you that don't know Steve, let me give you a quick rundown.

Steve is an amazingly talented player who was a state champion in the 70's, who even has a few GM scalps to his credit. He hasn't played that often for many years due to a grudge that he holds with the ICA, which for everyone's sanity I won't recap here. Steve is brilliant to a fault, the fault being that he can be very rigid in his ideas and doesn't play well with others. Still I feel loyalty to Steve as every week in the mid to late 80's he would show up every week at the Orland Chess club mercilessly whupping us, and was very responsible for turning many of us teenage punks into experts or masters.

Well, Theo was predicting my return to tournament play in 2008 and that I would gain the roughly 95 rating points to get my long awaited master title. Steve matter of factly stated, "I doubt it". When I inquired as to why that was he explained that "if you don't make master by age 22, you won't ever do it". While he is correct that the difficulty level goes way up, due more to real life stresses and less time for study, it is not such an oddity for a player to make master after the age of 22.

So the thing to do in order to prove Steve wrong would be to play a match against him. So even though Steve has a lifetime record of greater than 90% against me, I say, "Bring it!" I am challenging him to a match for sometime in 2008. I plan on hopefully updating this story when Steve accepts my challenge, and announcing the date when it becomes available.

Time to start training.

Glenn

I can rest now

This weekend I directed my final two tournaments for the year. Yesterday we drew nearly 50 players for the 2nd month in a row at the Orland scholastic including a couple of new teams. We also held a Christmas raffle for the players with chess items donated by Mikhail Korenman, Frank Swindell, and myself. Hopefully we will see our numbers increase up to 70-80 players in 2008.

Today I directed at the Kumbaya festival of chess events which actually had 3 different events. First up was the puzzle solving contest, which I highly recommend running. Scott Drier had the only perfect score of 18/18 puzzles of mate in 1s, 2s and 3s. What was so interesting about the event is that I have never heard any scholastic chess event this quiet at the players were concentrating very hard on the puzzles. I wasn't sure how well these events would work until being shown the contest by Susan Polgar and Paul Truong, I believe it in now. The other two events were a blitz tournament, and a bughouse tournament. For bughouse I always let the kids come up with their own team names to see what they can come up with, todays were pretty straight forward, nothing that interesting. The fun part of that event was watching the how well the few teams that were made up of siblings do so well.

My next event will be when Karpov comes here to Chicago, January 11-13.

Glenn

Illinois Chess 2008

I have to say that as I prepare to direct my last couple of events for the year that I am really looking forward to what is happening in Illinois chess for 2008.

Before I get into that, a couple quick notes, I have added a couple more links including one for the blog of my good friend Betsy Dynako. Saturday we run our final Orland Scholastic of the year, and we are anticipating 50+ players again, which is outstanding for the Southern Suburbs.

Now what is so exciting about 2008 in IL Chess? Where do I start? I suppose the beginning of the year is a good enough place. In the first couple of weeks, Chicago will be hosing Anatoly Karpov as part of Mikhail Korenman's International Chess Convention. Rumor has it Nigel Short may also be in town at that time. Kind of a shame that we couldn't plan a rapid event or some matches with Shulman and Onischuk (who is apparently close to moving here) in town at the same time.

Also nice to see is the invitations for the Denker qualifier, this year all 12 invitees are over 2000, which I can't remember happening before. Shows that we are progressing quite nicely at the top scholastic levels. On that note, Andi Rosen who heads up the Warren Program which is a wonderful program designed to help talented juniors get to the elite status, is going to start organizing monthly adult vs. junior training tournaments to further that improvement.

Sevan Muradian is planning on his IM/GM norm events getting to nearly monthly status, which when considering Ray Robson just received his 1st IM norm here, (and his last one this past week in Texas), these events are important. I will be announcing the dates and format of the Colias just after the new year too.

All in all, it is really nice to be ending the year on such a high note. In the coming weeks there will be even more exciting announcements, which I am not yet able to discuss to set interest in the chess community ablaze.

Glenn

Back from Houston

It is pretty late, so here is just a brief rundown. Plenty of weirdness, that I will enjoy recapping the K12 maybe tomorrow. In the meanwhile:

Thumbsup:
Event staff for a wonderfully run event.
1332 scholastic chessplayers that generally gave it all they had.
Texas volunteers, and locals who were amazingly friendly.

Thumbsdown:
Hotel Foodservice. No excuse for knowing when there will be a lunch rush and still being unprepared.
Scholastic Council (hopefully I don't get blacklisted for that). Repeat after me, Parent's do not belong on the playing floor! It affects the quality of the tournament when TDs are unable to be on the floor for rulings because a parent or coach has to know that instant why their son's opponent left to go to the bathroom, and why I am not following them to verify they aren't cheating.

More tomorrow.

Glenn

'Tis the season for Sportsmanship

Ask any TD who has worked large events, and they will be quick to tell you a story. Many of us sit around and swap stories at Nationals. Since I am leaving in a couple of days to head down to Houston, I thought I might share a few.

At my very first National K-12 event, within a couple of rounds I was party to some strange things. A player smacking another player upside the head. When I got to the board, and asked for an explanation, the player explained that her neighbor had given her opponent a good move. Naturally I had to issue warnings to both the smacker and smackee.

Later in that event, an interesting thing happened, after a round a player came in with a complaint. He had been offered a pack of Pokemon cards in exchange for resigning in a position he was winning, but the opponent never delivered. Interestingly, when we asked what remedy he was seeking, the boy just wanted us to force the opponent to give up the cards. When we called the other boy in with his father, the boy confessed to what happened. The father seemed stunned, and said "I have no idea where he gets that from". Ken Sloan, who was the chief TD of the section, asked if the father issues rewards for his son winning. The father said that he gives his son 2 packs of Pokemon cards for every win. We no longer wondered where it came from. Did I mention that both of these events happened in the Kindergarten section?

I realize that these are important events, but urge parents and coaches not to put too much of an emphasis on the child's results, it does take its toll on them. If I have time this week, I will share a few more stories along those lines.

Bad sportsmanship is completely unnecessary, and oftentimes is learned from adults (which we don't like to admit). There is a group that is the self proclaimed "premier chess organization" in Illinois, they teach chess at quite a few schools, yet on their website have a link to an essay entitled "How to Annoy Your Opponent". This treasure chest of wisdom advises players to talk or cough loudly during your opponents moves, start rumors about your opponent, and other drivel that I do not wish to pollute my site with. To be completely fair, it appears to be a really lame attempt at a satire, but still has no place to be linked to by scholastic players.

So I head to Texas, where my hopes are high because I also have seen remarkable acts of kindness and compassion between players previously there at Nationals. I would rather discuss those.

Glenn

Is Goichberg good for Chicago?

I have found that in my time in chess, Bill Goichberg is a very controversial figure. People either seem to really like or dislike him, there is very little middle ground. This post is not to pass judgement either way, rather to bring up some questions.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have worked for Bill as a TD before.

To some people the title of this post will appear silly. The CCA runs the Chicago Open, and the Midwest Class, the two largest and most successful tournaments in the area. It brings prestige, strong players, opportunities for area players, into the Chicago area. These are all positive things. After all, without these events, where else would tournament players go?

The CCA does take in roughly 50% of the adult entry fees for tournaments in the Chicago area in a given year. Does it give anything back to the chess community though? Is there any responsibility to give back to the Chicago chess community? Obviously a more vibrant area for players would benefit the CCA in turn bringing more players into their tournaments.

To best understand why this is even an issue, one must know a little bit about the Chicago tournament scene pre-Goichberg. In the 80's and early 90's Chicago in addition to having perhaps the highest concentration of NTDs, also had perhaps the best base of tournament organizers in Helen Warren, Fred Gruenberg, Al Losoff, Richard Verber, and the Oak Park Forest Park Chess Club. Helen ran the Midwest Masters every memorial day weekend, Fred, Al, and Verber focused on the larger swisses. The OPFP club had the Master Challenge as their signature event. The local organizers didn't always get along, but the profits from those events were put back into the community in the form of GM appearances, free scholastic clinics, and even free and low cost local swiss events.

In a very short time, Losoff moved away, the OPFP club folded, Gruenberg and Warren stopped running events. With no local organizing talent to take over, Goichberg came in and filled the vacuum. It is unclear whether or not there would be any local organizers that could or would step in today if the CCA pulled out.

It would be nice to see the CCA give a little back to this area, though should they be obliged to?

Glenn

Back from Hiatus

My apologies to any faithful readers that may have missed me. This last few weeks have been a whirlwind of chess tournaments, business travel, illness, and obligations. Not nearly as glamorous as it sounds.

In chess though there were several notable happenings this last month. Our last Orland Park tournament drew 52 playerssetting a record and showing some life in the south suburbs.

The October Kumbaya tournament drew 130+ players and is well on its way to starting to draw 150-200 players without a hitch.

I directed at the National Youth Action in Saint Louis, which was a wonderful experience. Nearly 500 players were handled by a mere 5 floor TDs, as the event was very efficiently run. There is no doubt that NTD Wayne Clark who was the Chief, is one of the rising stars of the TD world along with Franc Guadalupe who will be in charge of the National K-12.

One of the more interesting moments at the event was a parent of one of the leading scorers in the K-3 section venturing into the team room of the team he was in competition against, and asking for scoresheets of games against his son's next round opponent. He did make it out of the room alive if you were wondering.

I should have more frequent updates the next few months. There should be much to report, such as, the final Orland Scholastic of the year, the K-12, the next NACA Fide tournament where Ray Robson will attempt his 2nd IM norm, both Karpov and Nigel Short visiting Chicago in early January. Talk to everyone soon.

Glenn