• Dean-Kawamura wins EBCC February Swiss
  • There’s a new chess player in town, and his first tournament was a resounding success. New York NM Ben Dean-Kawamura, recently relocated to the Bay Area, won his first tournament in these parts with a resounding 4-0 score. To win the tournament he had to face the #1, 3 and 4 seeds in the tournament (he was the #2 seed), knocking them off in succession in rounds 2-4. He played an excellent attacking game against SM David Pruess in round 2, which is analyzed in the instructional material section of the newsletter.
  • Second was taken by Mingson Chen with a score of 3.5/4. U2000 honors went to Robert Russo, U1700 to Jonathan Soo Hoo, and U1500 to Jamie Sawhill. A very interesting game between Soo Hoo and Sawhill is analyzed by EBCC member Sawhill in the instructional section. Thanks to Jamie for contributing these excellent notes to our newsletter.
• Runyon wins the Fourth Monday Night Marathon
  • Mike Runyon won the 4th EBCC Monday night tourney with a score of 4.5/6. Runyon, after falling victim to a first round upset at the hands of EBCC regular Carl Woebcke, came all the way back with wins against front-runners Larry Snyder and Craig Andries in the final two rounds. The 5th Marathon has begun, but it is still possible to enter with a first round bye.
• Wednesday Night Action
  • The only regular action tournament in the Bay Area continues to produce exciting and hard fought games. The February 1st tournament was won by Craig Andries, who beat the 2nd and 3rd seeds in the first two rounds but was held to a draw in his third game by Fentress Hill, a relative newcomer to the tournament scene. EBCC director Andy Lee won the February 8th tournament, but only after some scary moments in the last round versus Josh Standig. Both players had under a minute on their clocks when the game ended.
• January EBCC Quads
  • Von Motschenbacher and Stephen Surtshin were victorious in the EBCC Quads held January 30th. Surtshin breezed through his quad with a perfect score while Motschenbacher finished with a strong 2-1, losing only to house man Andy Lee in the last round.
• Bay Area Chess League to open soon
  • A chess league will be starting its first season in the Bay Area shortly. The matches will be played once a month between 4 person teams (though the teams may have many alternates on their roster). The first two match dates are Feb 27th and March 26th. It is still not too late to get into the league as there is room for a few more players. If you would like to have a team or be placed on a team, please contact David Pruess at liga@eastbaychess.com ASAP.
• EBCC February Scholastic Quads
  • 13 players turned out for the EBCC February scholastic quads (creating one quint). Three players walked away with awesome perfect scores. They were Ojas Chinchwadkar, John Clara and Christopher Lopez. Congratulations to them!
• EBCC February Open Quads
  • The club open quads had 12 players, which nicely formed 3 perfect quads. In the top section unrated Nima Ferdosi, who has been making his over the board debut after playing correspondence chess for some time, won the quad with a 3-0 score. A-player David Goldfarb played some violent chess, resulting in a cute pair of games in rounds 1 and 2 in the same variation - one loss to Ferdosi and a win against Von Motschenbacher. Those games were very exciting and are given below.
  • The second quad was won with 2.5 points by youngster Ted Belanoff, and the bottom quad was won by another unrated player, Gerl Jenkins, scoring a perfect 3-0, and displaying really fine play.

    Goldfarb-Ferdosi
    1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nd2 Nf6 4.e5 Nfd7 5.Bd3 c5 6.c3 Nc6 7.Ndf3 Qb6 8.Ne2 cxd4 9.cxd4 f6 10.exf6 Nxf6 11.O-O Bd6 12.Re1 O-O 13.Nc3 Bd7 14.Na4 Qc7 15.Nc5 Nxd4 16.Nxd4 Bxc5 17.Nxe6 Bxe6 18.Rxe6 Ne4 (Bxf2+!) 19.Be3 Nxf2 20.Bxh7+ Kh7 21.Qh5+ Kg8 22.Rc1 Be3! 23.Rxc7 Nh3+ 24.Resigns, 0-1

    Goldfarb-Motschenbacher
    1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nd2 Nf6 4.e5 Nfd7 5.Bd3 c5 6.c3 Nc6 7.Ndf3 Qb6 8.Ne2 cxd4 9.cxd4 f6 10.exf6 Nxf6 11.O-O Bd6 12.Re1 O-O 13.Nc3 Bd7 14.Bg5 h6 15.Bh4 Kh8 16.Bc2 Rae8 17.a3 a6 18.Qd3 g5 19.Nxg5 hxg5 20.Bxg5 Re7 21.Nxd5 Qxd4 22.Qh3+ Nh7 23.Bxe7 Qxf2+ 24.Kh1 Qxc2 25.Bxd6 Rf5 and Resigns, 1-0

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