Bhat victorious in Michael Franett Memorial IM tournament
The Michael Franett Memorial has come to an end. IM Vinay Bhat had clinched first with a terrific 8.5/10 score, and wrapped up an undefeated tournament with a final round draw with Black against IM Ricardo DeGuzman. Second and third place were shared between IM Odondoo Ganbold of Mongolia and FM David Pruess with 7.5/11. Pruess narrowly missed his final IM norm, which required 8 points.
Bhat-Pruess Exhibition Match on January 29th
Bhat and Pruess played an exciting game in the Franett Memorial, which helped spur Bhat to a terrific tournament. Here are the moves:
The two will be playing an exhibition game against each other on Jan 29th at 1 p.m. at the Club, and if the fireworks from this game are any indication, this will be a fun event! The two will play from different rooms and explain their thoughts to the audience assembled in the room they are in.
Lee wins New Year’s Swiss
NM Andy Lee was the clear winner of the Open section of the EBCC New Year’s Swiss, with an undefeated 5/6. Also playing good tournaments were Larry Snyder and Walter Wood, who each drew with Lee en route to scoring 4/6. Top u1900 was won by Craig Andries with 3.5.
The reserve section resulted in a three-way tie after the top board Alan Howe - Carl Woebcke ended in a draw, allowing Antonio Salles to catch them at 4.5/6.
One of Lee’s games is featured with annotations in the instructional segment of this newsletter, as well as a selection of tactical problems culled from the games played in the weekend tournament.
January Scholastic quads
In the top quad Austin Lloyd won for the second consecutive month, with a perfect 3-0. The six player lower section was won by Ray Hua Wu won convincingly with 3-0 as well.
Salar Jahedi at the New York Masters
Many club members probably know that our Monday Night Marathon is sponsored by the New York Masters, the strongest weekly action tournament in the US, which regularly sees the participation of players like Gata Kamsky and US champion Hikaru Nakamura, amongst other top grandmasters. Free entry to a NY Masters event is given to the overall winner of the Monday Night Tournaments as well as any non-master to win a game against a master during the course of the tournament. This is especially valuable, as otherwise the tournament is closed to players under 2200.
Salar Jahedi was the winner of the third Monday Night Marathon, the first to feature this sponsorship, and recently he made it to New York to play in the event. Salar did not have the G/30 practice of his experienced opponents and this showed. However, considering that he was playing much higher rated players in several cases, his positions were remarkably good. In fact, he was better at some point in each game, and ahead material in three of them. In the instructional material section, you can find some of these games.
Wednesday Night Action
The weekly tournaments have seen recent victories by Steven Svoboda, Nelson Sowell, and Salar Jahedi, each tallying a score of 3-0. The 1/5/05 tourney saw Svoboda beat Sowell in the final round; however, Nelson came back the next week to win in an upset over the top seed, Josh Standig, to take the tournament. Jahedi, just returned from practicing with the G/30 time control in NY, took the next week’s tournament by beating previous winner Sowell in the last round. Each week’s games are hard fought and competitive affairs so come out and try action chess on a Wednesday night sometime soon!
