• East Bay Chess Club GM Round Robin
  • From Tuesday March 29th through Wednesday, April 6th, the strongest event held in the East Bay since the 1984 US Championship took place. Grandmasters Alex Yermolinsky, Suat Atalik (from Bosnia & Herzegovina), Dashzeveg Sharavdorj (from Mongolia), International Master Thomas Roussel-Roozmon (from Canada), and Fide Masters David Pruess and Alan Stein met in a double round-robin event, from which GM Suat Atalik emerged victorious with 7.0/10.
  • After a big first round upset loss to FM Stein, Atalik did not lose another game and went plus-5 (5 wins, 4 draws) in his final 9 games! IM Roussel-Roozmon finished second behind Atalik with 6.0/10 (one point short of the GM norm requirement) and a 2539 FIDE performance rating. GM Alex Yermolinsky started out well and finished strongly to end up on 5.5/10, but had a rough stretch in the middle of the tournament where he was held winless for 5 consecutive rounds. GM Sharavdorj, FM Stein, and FM Pruess finished in places 4-6, all having played fighting chess, but drawing the short end of the straw in some interesting struggles.
  • The tournament was filled with hard fought games, with only 3 games finishing in fewer than 30 moves! No player escaped unscathed. FMs Alan Stein and David Pruess were the only players not to draw a single game in the event.
  • Many thanks to all those who drove players to the club, helped out during the tournament, and helped broadcast the games on ICC everyday! Special thanks to Jamie Sawhill for acting in all these capacities at various times!
  • A .pgn file of all the games is available on the Club website (http://www.eastbaychess.com/tourney/05/GMXtable.html), and the full crosstable is included below. One annotated game from each round is provided in the games section of this newsletter.

  • 
    EBCC GM Round-Robin, 2005                        cat. IX (2461)
    ---------------------------------------------------------------
                                            1  2  3  4  5  6  Total
    ---------------------------------------------------------------
     1 Sharavdorj, Dashzeveg    GM MGL 2453 ** 01 11 00 =0 10  4.5 
     2 Pruess, David            FM USA 2394 10 ** 10 00 01 00  3.0 
     3 Stein, Alan              FM USA 2362 00 01 ** 10 01 10  4.0 
     4 Atalik, Suat             GM BIH 2560 11 11 01 ** == ==  7.0 
     5 Yermolinsky, Alex        GM USA 2570 =1 10 10 == ** ==  5.5 
     6 Roussel-Roozmon, Thomas  IM CAN 2425 01 11 01 == == **  6.0 
    ---------------------------------------------------------------
        

• Andras Erdei wins April Swiss; Rico Adkins takes Reserve Section
  • NM Andras Erdei won a small but hotly contested Open Section with a 4-0 score. Despite the perfect score, he had many extremely tense games, playing for the full 5 hours in three of his four games. Taking second a full point behind was Kenneth Hills, and the top Under-2000 prize went to Mingson Chen at 2-2.
  • The Reserve Section (Under-1750) was won with 3.5-0.5 by Rico Adkins, half a point ahead of Marika Litras and Nelson Sowell who shared 2nd-3rd. The Under-1550 was shared by John Martin and Tyler Russo with 2 points apiece.
  • The May Swiss will take place May 7-8. Note that the dates on the June Swiss were initially incorrect on the website and will be held on June 18-19.
• March 27th Open Quads
  • At poorly advertised quads, exactly four showed up; however, this was just enough to run one quad! The quad finished in a three-way tie (a club first!) between Nelson Sowell, Von Motschenbacher, and Kevin Zhu. A further rarity at the club was the playing of several draws: all games between these three were drawn! Kevin came in rated 1308 and had a remarkable event, drawing with Nelson and Von (both of whom are rated about 1700), and then winning his remaining game. The next open quads will be on Sunday, April 17th.
• Bayareasliga: Round 2 Report
  • There were still some organizational kinks in the second round, as half of one team did not show up, forfeiting their games, and putting their team in an extremely difficult spot. Hard to play when your two top boards don’t show up, and the match ended 3.5-0.5 in favor of David, Andy and their Merciless Minions (DAMM) against the Oakland Maters (OM). Hopefully next month a full squad will give the Maters a fair chance, and we can look forward to our first league matches without missing players. DAMM reached 6.5 points through this match and is tied for the league lead.
  • In another match, El Paso Tal and his Magicians (EPT) and UC Berkeley (UCB) had agreed to field three player teams (rather than the usual four), with a split point for the unplayed game. UCB, with their top player IM Vinay Bhat in action, ran away with it, scoring three wins to also reach 6.5 total points and grab a share of the league lead.
  • Marin County (MC) versus the Berkeley Chess School (BCS) saw the return of former US Champion IM John Grefe. His game with IM Ronald Cusi was drawn, but his team, MC, was able to pull out a narrow 2.5-1.5 match victory. MC reached 4.5 points, and currently have third place in the league standings.
  • The next match is on April 30th at 2 p.m.

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