The tournament was as quaint as the Eastern Idaho Open two weeks ago with 12 competitors vying for the big bucks. The small tournament was not without competition as five of the twelve were rated 1700 or higher, including chess legend Dan Mayers (1841). Also, Frank Niro (1700), Caleb Kircher (1816), Jeff Roland (1716), and David Sawyer (1925). The low numbers caused TD Jeff Roland and consensus among players to have the Reserve Section (U1400) play with the Open Section. Reservists included Adam Porth, Matt Reidy, Jay Simonson, and Paul Sawyer.
I like the tournament format with games getting "progressively" longer. We started with G/30 and worked up to G/90 within four rounds. I would like to start at G/5 and work up to G/90, but rating a tournament like this is too difficult as the templates that the USCF have are not amenable to such.
Dan Mayers is currently living in Ketchum, however he faced Bobby Fischer while playing and living in New York during the 50's. One participant even indicated that Mr. Mayers even beat Fischer! Dan is 90 years old and was delivered to Wood River High School by Frank Niro. Mr. Niro recently became very active in promoting chess in Idaho and is even sponsoring a 24-hour National Chess Day celebration.
My hero . . .Frank Niro!
Mr. Mayers planted himself on board 101 and patiently played all day at that spot and only occasionally moved around to watch some games. There is certainly some feistiness in this veteran chess player that has faced grandmasters in international and national tournaments. And he is one of the top rated senior players in the United States. We decided to assign board 101 to Dan as he was certainly a celebrity that graced our little tournament.
I hope to be playing (and enjoying) chess at age ninety.
And now for the action . . .
Round 1
Round 1: I was extremely happy about the game I played against Dan and only started making mistakes after I was under time pressure with less than a minute left. Fritz said I was 0.10 on move 17. As time kept ticking and I became more nervous, I completely missed a free queen (see move 28)! The heat in my cheeks built as I instead gave Mr. Mayers my Bishop - my moves were horrible in the last 30 seconds. I resigned after a "shtupid mishtake" with 22 seconds left, not to mention my other errors just prior the quintessential blunder. "Sharp as a whip," I heard myself say while shrugging in the end. Was that a sarcastic self-deprecating remark or a compliment to my opponent?
Round 2
Round 2: I played a former student, wrhs junior Matt Reidy. Matt began playing in tournaments this last year and I played confidently against him after he dropped a bishop on move 9. It was good to see him applying some of the ideas I taught him last year. He played a version of the Colle-Zuckertort, but failed to realize some of the positional advantages the Colle System offers white.
Round 3
Round 3: This is the worst game I have played all year! I violated many simple opening concepts and succumbed to basic and straight up play from Cody Gorman from Renaissance Charter School. Too many pieces moved more than once in the opening and defending e4 with the queen moves the queen way too early. Move 12 was a big mistake. I would have fared better with 12. Qd1. I knew I should have eaten something before this round. Cody is a provisional 1635, however, during our game he was a provisional 1383. This cost me seven rating points for the tournament!
A budding chess player, Round 4
Round 4: My last game was against 8 year-old Jacob Nathan from Idaho Falls. As a teacher, I appreciate seeing growth in young people and over the course of a year, I have observed Jacob learn solid opening strategies, and more importantly, he observes chess etiquette and behavior standards that he disregarded only a year ago. Unfortunately, he blundered his queen during the game and never quite recovered after move 14. I am as impressed with an eight year old playing among all the adults, as I am a ninety year old!
Junior prizes: Jacob Nathan (1st), Matt Reidy (2nd), and Paul Sawyer (3rd)
Caleb Kircher (3.5 pts.), 1st place tie Open Section, $70
Dan Sawyer (3.5 pts.), 1st place tie Open Section, $70
Cody Gorman (3.0 pts.), 3rd place Open Section, $40
Jay Simonson and I tied (2.0) 1st place Reserve Section, $50
Matt Reidy, right (1.0 pt.), 3rd place Reserve Section, $20 (Shane Taylor on left).
Caleb Kircher, left, plays Jeff Roland, right, while David Sawyer helps analyze
Interesting TD moments:
1. Can a player who is under 5 minutes stop recording, but have a spectator continue to record?
2. When players choose to play in an Open Section, they are not eligible for the Reserve section prizes. Does this hold for Reserve Section players? What if a Reserve Section player actually wins the Open Section? Do they still only win the Reserve Prize?
Special Thanks to: Jay Simonson and Jeff Roland for their help in organizing the tournament.
Here in my classroom, I am monitoring our last two games between Max Mihalic and Chase Hutchinson, right now. What is really neat is that while my club players are vying for the WRHS Championship title, I also have the US Championships live streaming on my Promethean board. Very cool!
The last games are going to decide the second place winner - just how we like it - tension and pressure in the last round for four of the five participating players. Desmond ended with 6.5 points and is untouchable, but Christoffer went 1-and-1 with Max during the last round which puts Christoffer at 4.5 points and Chase at 3.0 points. Chase could potentially knock Christoffer out of second place with two wins. If Max wins just one game, then Christoffer wins second place. With two wins for Max, there will be a three way tie for third and some run-off games.
With 5 other people not showing up we decided to go for a double round robin with each person playing every other person once as white and once as black.
Participants: Max Mihalic Christoffer Mauritzen Chase Hutchinson Riley Clark Desmond Porth
I just get busier and busier. This week we ended a quarter (grades due) and began a new one (new classes). We also had two days of Parent-Teacher Conferences, soccer started for Darwin, and I was told last week to have 5 minute video reports on the uses of the technology grants submitted by Friday! I made 3 videos. Our school won $110,000 in technology grant money, and I wrote 6 grants to earn $60,000 of it. I also prepared an elementary championship for our valley. Here is what happened:
2012 WRESCC
It was a first grade day! The top players were 1st graders and they all seemed to dominate all the other grades. This special tournament was first offered last year as a Senior Project for WRHS graduate, Nick Bruck. We wanted to keep it going and build some competitive spirit between our area elementary schools. Last year, the Bellevue Bears won this championship. Who would it be this year?
Owen Stouffer - Perfect 5.0
The elementary schools in the area include: Bellevue, Woodside, Hailey, Hemingway, Sage, and Community School. The two private schools did not have any participants this year, however. There were twenty students in all ranging from Kindergarten to fifth grade. Unfortunately, there were no third graders from any school participating. Teams consisted of the top four players from each school and only Hemingway happened to have a partial team of three players.
I tried to encourage longer and more patient games, so G/30 was selected and only two games the entire day reached a time pressure mark. As players began arriving, I was personally feeling very ready, but players continued to arrive and register after the tournament was supposed to start. We have a laid-back valley, but as the numbers grew and the tournament start delayed even more, I was preparing for a long day. Would the new tournament folk be ready? Or, would they think, "what have I gotten myself into?" I always try to keep things moving so players and parents will want to come back.
Desmond was a Champ, too.
With this being the last weekend to ski in the valley, I knew we would be a little light on numbers, but was very happy with the 20 kids that arrived, eager to play and representing all the area public schools. Tournaments in our valley are also educational so I not only TDed but also taught. So did my excellent assistant (and son!), Desmond. He showed some kids how to avoid Scholar's Mate and how to mate with a rook and king, and even how to avoid some stalemates. After seven hours of helping me out, he exclaimed, "man, I'm tired. I didn't know that this would be so tiring . . ." Each round challenged Desmond, me, and our knowledge of the rules.
Round one began nearly 30 minutes late and I started experiencing computer glitches immediately. I struggled to delete one player that did not show and wintd kept inactivating another player. For the first round, I had to re-pair three times!
Instead of printing pairings or posting them on the screen, as I have in the past, I would use the PRNTSCR function to copy a window, post it in Word, Crop it, and Save it in Dropbox. Then my assistant would open the file on another laptop for the kids to see. It worked well, but not as well as displaying it on the big screen; the projector was not available to us today.
Round 2 and 3 produced some nice upsets where 1st graders beat 5th graders. And brother, Owen Stouffer put his older brother, Garrett Stouffer down! Owen went on to win the rest of his games and complete the tournament with a perfect 5.0! There were some reasonable stalemates and the longest games were only 30 minutes.
"Is this a stalemate?"
Otto shows his trophy off!
I had three door prizes for players that I drew for in between rounds to keep the excitement up, an "eagle" rollup board, a backpack, and a magnetic travel board. Food and sustenance also became a factor as I was only planning on playing until about noon. Noon was fast approaching and their were two rounds left! Kathy Baker, a chess mom, began helping Des and me as well and she had many bags of popcorn from a left over cub scout event from the night before to offer hungry players. I should remind people to bring food to tournament.
I posted the team scores on the dryboard in between rounds. Bellevue Elementary School was always in the lead, but after round 4, Hailey Elementary School surprised the tournament with a half point lead. Bellevue would have to pull out some strong games in the 5th round in order to win the tournament. Ms. Turco has run a lunchtime elementary school chess club at three of the four schools for fifteen years and secretly wanted the under dogs to win this year. Bellevue has always had strong players.
Bellevue was pitted against Hailey in the top boards for the fifth round - the money round. On the top board, the game only went for about five minutes with a quick version of Fried Liver taking care of business between Owen Stouffer and Alex Baker. Bellevue player, Quentin Van Law played another Hailey player, Collin Young and decisively won that game. On another board - Bellevue vs. Hemingway, Darwin beat Jake Simon with a version of Scholar's Mate.
The last round and the day belonged to Bellevue and the first grade. It was neat to see Owen Stouffer get a perfect tournament and nobody got shut-out. Trophies were presented to first place and second places. Medals were awarded to third place. Sportsmanship awards went to Quentin Van Law, Otto Olson, and Rigoberto Montes. I am sure that next year, Hemingway and Woodside will be better represented with more players, and maybe Sage and Community Schools will want to participate. Congratulations to our valley chess champions and the Bellevue Bears!
The Bellevue Bears - Top Elementary School!
Champions:
Kindergarten Emmitt Stouffer
1st Grade Owen Stouffer
2nd Grade Quentin Van Law
3rd Grade None
4th Grade Alex Baker
5th Grade Garrett Stouffer
Next weekend brings the Idaho Open in Pocatello, and the next local tournament will be a WRHS Championship. Don't forget Power Chess tomorrow!
2011 WRESCC Champions from Bellevue Elementary School
The Wood River Elementary School Chess Championship begins tomorrow morning which includes one open section for K-5th grade. I look forward to sharing with you the results. We began this tournament last year for Nick Bruck's Senior Project.
