The field for the 4th Colias memorial is now set. We will be drawing lots tomorrow. The field for the top 2 sections are:
IM Emory Tate 2367
FM Peter Bereolos 2323
FM Aleksandr Stamnov 2239
NM Steven Tennant 2216
NM Tony Cao 2208
NM Tim McEntee 2200
NM Len Weber 2200
NM Glen Gratz 2133
Adam Strunk 2113
Robert Loncarevic 2048
Eric Rosen 2038
Larry Cohen 2022
For our class section, here are the lots and pairings:
1. Fred Gruenberg
2. Leo Kirsch
3. Sevan Muradian
4. Theo Poulos
5. Vladimir Djordjevic
6. Ryan Richardson
The pairings will thus be as follows:
Friday August 1 at 7PM:
Gruenberg - Richardson
Kirsch - Djordjevic
Muradian - Poulos
Saturday August 2 at 10AM:
Gruenberg - Kirsch
Djordjevic - Muradian
Richardson - Poulos
Saturday August 2 at 3PM:
Muradian - Gruenberg
Richardson - Kirsch
Poulos - Djordjevic
Sunday August 3 at 10AM:
Gruenberg - Poulos
Kirsch - Muradian
Djordjevic - Richardson
Sunday August 3 at 3PM:
Djordjevic - Gruenberg
Poulos - Kirsch
Muradian - Richardson
More to come.
G
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Changes
Ok, so it has been nearly a month since my last post. If people are still out there reading, let me tell you about some changes. I have gotten truly a little tired blogging about chess. There isn't much to talk about in regards to scholastic chess over the summer, and there are other things that I would like to talk about.
First, the 4th Billy Colias Memorial is next weekend. I will try to post updates on that each day while it is going on. For those of you not familiar with Billy, he was perhaps the strongest player to be homegrown in the midwest. He also was an outstanding chess teacher, and one of the more fun, interesting, and gregarious players I ever met. My favorite thing about Billy was watching him analyze games. I saw one game where he played an 1100 who blundered a queen horribly and went over it with the player. they got to the position where the queen was dropped, and Billy paused for a second. He then said wow, this is interesting, was your idea to do this? He then constructed a kingside attacking plan that was viable. The opponent perked up as Billy started talking about how creative an idea his opponent had. The opponent walked away feeling like a million bucks, and thats how many of us felt hanging out with Billy.
One of my absolute favorite things to follow is baseball. I am a bit of a junky, so I watch a lot of it. So this week when I read one of the dumber things ever by analyst and broadcaster Joe Morgan, I wanted to share it. According to Joe, on his ESPN chat, run differential is an overrated statistic. Yeah, it is really overrated to score more runs than your opponents. That has nothing to do with winning.
Glenn
First, the 4th Billy Colias Memorial is next weekend. I will try to post updates on that each day while it is going on. For those of you not familiar with Billy, he was perhaps the strongest player to be homegrown in the midwest. He also was an outstanding chess teacher, and one of the more fun, interesting, and gregarious players I ever met. My favorite thing about Billy was watching him analyze games. I saw one game where he played an 1100 who blundered a queen horribly and went over it with the player. they got to the position where the queen was dropped, and Billy paused for a second. He then said wow, this is interesting, was your idea to do this? He then constructed a kingside attacking plan that was viable. The opponent perked up as Billy started talking about how creative an idea his opponent had. The opponent walked away feeling like a million bucks, and thats how many of us felt hanging out with Billy.
One of my absolute favorite things to follow is baseball. I am a bit of a junky, so I watch a lot of it. So this week when I read one of the dumber things ever by analyst and broadcaster Joe Morgan, I wanted to share it. According to Joe, on his ESPN chat, run differential is an overrated statistic. Yeah, it is really overrated to score more runs than your opponents. That has nothing to do with winning.
Glenn
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
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
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
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Krush, Zatonskih and the US Womens title
I recently took the time to read Irina Krush's open letter on the USCF homepage. If you haven't read it, or followed the saga, the title of US Women's champion was decided by an armageddon game since the two players tied in the regular tournament. Armageddon is a silly handicap style blitz game that arguably has no place in determining a championship of any kind. In this type of game, the white player also gets extra time usually 7 minutes to the black players 5 minutes, and in exchange for this, a draw is a win for black.
In Irina's letter, she raises the concern that Anna was touching her pieces and starting to move before Irina finished her move, and why didn't a TD step in. I watched the youtube video multiple times, and like Irina, and anyone else that has seen it, there is no doubt that Anna was touching pieces prior to Irina hitting the clock. However, as it is announced at every scholastic event, and a rule that every player should know, if your opponent is doing something you do not like, stop the clock and make a claim to the TD. The fact that Irina did not make a claim is her own fault and by not doing so during the game, she waived the right to have a valid protest. Also, while Anna was guilty of this much more often, I saw one instance where Irina reaching for a piece prior to Anna hitting the clock actually blocked Anna's hand from getting to the clock. Basically both players had "bad blitz habits" as Irina called it.
I have had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Krush on a few occasions, and even had the privilege of going to dinner with a group of players including her at one event. She seems to be a very likeable person, and this letter smacks of sour grapes and IMO it is beneath her. She argues in one sentence that she did not know what was going on, as to why she didn't make a claim, but then argues that her poor sportsmanship of knocking the piece flying off the board at the end of the game was as the result of her opponent cheating. Well, which is it?
Many sporting events are decided by the narrowest of margins, the buzzer beater in basketball, the walkoff in baseball, the hail mary in football. The margin of victory does not diminish the achievement of the players involved. Congratulations to Irina, and also to our US Womens champion Anna Zatonskih.
Glenn
In Irina's letter, she raises the concern that Anna was touching her pieces and starting to move before Irina finished her move, and why didn't a TD step in. I watched the youtube video multiple times, and like Irina, and anyone else that has seen it, there is no doubt that Anna was touching pieces prior to Irina hitting the clock. However, as it is announced at every scholastic event, and a rule that every player should know, if your opponent is doing something you do not like, stop the clock and make a claim to the TD. The fact that Irina did not make a claim is her own fault and by not doing so during the game, she waived the right to have a valid protest. Also, while Anna was guilty of this much more often, I saw one instance where Irina reaching for a piece prior to Anna hitting the clock actually blocked Anna's hand from getting to the clock. Basically both players had "bad blitz habits" as Irina called it.
I have had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Krush on a few occasions, and even had the privilege of going to dinner with a group of players including her at one event. She seems to be a very likeable person, and this letter smacks of sour grapes and IMO it is beneath her. She argues in one sentence that she did not know what was going on, as to why she didn't make a claim, but then argues that her poor sportsmanship of knocking the piece flying off the board at the end of the game was as the result of her opponent cheating. Well, which is it?
Many sporting events are decided by the narrowest of margins, the buzzer beater in basketball, the walkoff in baseball, the hail mary in football. The margin of victory does not diminish the achievement of the players involved. Congratulations to Irina, and also to our US Womens champion Anna Zatonskih.
Glenn
Friday, May 23, 2008
Big Week for Blaze Members
All in the same week, congratulations to Yuri Shulman on winning the US Championship, Ilan Meerovich for winning the fantasy challenge for the US Championship, and Mehmed Pasalic on achieving his 3rd and final IM norm. Now we just need Jan VanDeMortel, Dmitry Gurevich, and Adam Strunk to have huge weekends at the Chicago Open to complete the week.
Glenn
Glenn
Friday, May 2, 2008
Lack of posts
Sorry for the lack of posts lately. Last weekend, I directed (3) tournaments. After a relaxing breather this weekend (will probably do a little hiking), I go to Pittsburgh where aside from watching perhaps the two lousiest MLB teams on the planet (Pittsburgh and San Francisco) I will be walking among the 2000+ kids at the National Elementary. Hopefully I can blog from the site.
I would advise those who are going to check their room reservations, in addition to the Westin being sold out, the Doubletree which used to be just down the street from the Westin relocated and is significantly further away.
One of the more unfortunate parts of this event is that at least two teams that have won their state K-3 championships are not able to play as teams (Illinois and California). This is because their districts have divided the schools into K-2, 3-4 and 5-6, so even though the kids play together as a team in state events, Nationally they can't. To me this takes some of the luster off of this as a championship event. I realize that there are politics at stake with these decisions, but IMO what is fair to the kids should be the primary basis for the rules by the scholastic council. Hopefully we will see this changed in the near future.
Glenn
I would advise those who are going to check their room reservations, in addition to the Westin being sold out, the Doubletree which used to be just down the street from the Westin relocated and is significantly further away.
One of the more unfortunate parts of this event is that at least two teams that have won their state K-3 championships are not able to play as teams (Illinois and California). This is because their districts have divided the schools into K-2, 3-4 and 5-6, so even though the kids play together as a team in state events, Nationally they can't. To me this takes some of the luster off of this as a championship event. I realize that there are politics at stake with these decisions, but IMO what is fair to the kids should be the primary basis for the rules by the scholastic council. Hopefully we will see this changed in the near future.
Glenn
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)