2010 Idaho Closed Results

Emily plays Larry Parsons (16 time State Champion)

I have been to the Idaho Closed for the past few years and this by far was one of the most fun events I have attended.  I think it has helped to have generated such great friends that can also be competitors against one another in tournaments.  There was lot's of laughter and serious discussion in the business meeting, challenging games, a great venue at Boise State University, lifetime awards to dedicated individuals, and a very fun awards ceremony.  I would encourage all chess players to attend this event in the future - I miss it already.

Games are posted at the ICA website.

There were 42 competitors, 6 chess families (Porth's, Patterson's, Weyland's, Abernathy's, Abderhalden's, and the Min's), 7 women players, 13 junior players, and 4 senior players.  Five players rated above 1800,  six players under 1000, and 2 unrated players. The average rating was 1360.  There were 4 former state champions, and 3 former scholastic champions.  Glen Buckendorf attended his 53 consecutive Idaho Closed tournament.  

Glen receives a lifetime achievement award from the ICA

Congratulations to Phil Weyland, Larry Parsons, and  Jason Evers with 5.0/6 pts. and Idaho's Tri-Champions.

Jeff and Barry go over the awards

Here is the crosstable for the 2010 ICA Idaho Closed State Championship:

##	Player	ST	USCF	1	2	3	4	5	6	Score	Prize
1	Phil Weyland	ID	1824	W14	W16	W5	L2	W8	W7	5*	1st Overall
2	Larry R. Parsons	ID	2000	W15	W6	W12	W1	D3	D4	5*	2nd Overall
3	Jason Evers	ID	1887	W21	D7	W19	W13	D2	W5	5*	3rd Overall
4	Garrett Reynolds	ID	1933	W26	D8	D7	W19	W13	D2	4½	1st A
5	Kurt P. Douglas	ID	1738	W39	W20	L1	W21	W16	L3	4	1st B
6	Jim Stark	ID	1563	W33	L2	L22	W34	W21	W19	4	1st C
7	Caleb Paul Kircher	ID	1548	W35	D3	D4	W22	W24	L1	4	2nd C
8	Katie Abderhalden	ID	1562	W30	D4	W31	D25	L1	W24	4	Top Woman
9	Jeffrey T. Roland	ID	1775	L36	W28	D14	W29	W25	D10	4	2nd B
10	Reggie Holmquist	ID	Unr.	L20	W23	W15	W12	-H-	D9	4	1st Unrated
11	Barry D. Eacker	ID	1633	-H-	-N-	W27	W14	D12	W20	4	3rd B
12	James H. McGarvey	ID	1681	W28	W36	L2	L10	D11	W26	3½	Book #1**
13	Tom Booth	ID	1594	W34	W32	W25	L3	L4	D16	3½	Top Senior
14	Jamie Lang	ID	1219	L1	W40	D9	L11	W27	W25	3½	1st D
15	Emily N. Patterson	ID	1463	L2	W33	L10	W38	W32	D18	3½	Top Junior
16	David Wayne Stewart	ID	1516	W40	L1	W39	W20	L5	D13	3½	3rd C
17	Jeff M. Baggett	ID	1801	W22	L19	L21	D36	W29	W28	3½	2nd A
18	Daniel S. Looney	ID	1606	-H-	-N-	W37	D31	W23	D15	3½	2nd Senior
19	Rickey D. Weathers	ID	1500	W38	W17	L3	L4	W22	L6	3	Book #2**
20	Ronald Weyland	ID	1487	W14	W16	W5	L2	W8	W7	5
21	Caleb Abernathy	ID	1334	L3	W35	W17	L5	L6	W31	3	2nd D
22	Adam Porth	ID	1190	L17	W38	W6	L7	L19	W34	3	1st E
23	Andrew Uriarte	ID	1196	L25	L10	W35	W41	L18	W36	3	2nd E
24	Glen Buckendorf Jr.	ID	1800	D31	W37	-H-	W26	L7	L8	3
25	Stephen Oberle	ID	1803	W23	W29	L13	D8	L9	L14	2½
26	George Lundy	ID	1458	L4	W30	W41	L24	D31	L12	2½
27	Hugh S. Myers	ID	1563	D37	L31	L11	W30	L14	W33	2½
28	William Min	ID	1140	L12	L9	D30	W37	W39	L17	2½	2nd Junior
29	Ricky Abderhalden	ID	1516	W41	L25	D36	L9	L17	W38	2½
30	Carmen Elizabeth Pemsler	ID	860	L8	L26	D28	L27	W37	W39	2½	1st F
31	Kevin R. Patterson	ID	1184	D24	W27	L8	D18	D26	L21	2½
32	Alan C. Kepple	ID	1121	W42	L13	L20	W39	L15	-U-	2
33	Kathy Min	ID	868	L6	L15	L38	W35	W40	L27	2	2nd F
34	Katie Rae Patterson	ID	978	L13	L39	W40	L6	W41	L22	2	2nd Woman
35	Scott Featherston	ID	815	L7	L21	L23	L33	-B-	W40	2
36	Michael Ye	ID	1174	W9	L12	D29	D17	L20	L23	2
37	Michaela R. Abernathy	ID	887	D27	L24	L18	L28	L30	W41	1½
38	Patrick Abernathy	ID	Unr.	L19	L22	W33	L15	-H-	L29	1½	2nd Unrated
39	Deeban Ramalingam	ID	1164	L5	W34	L16	L32	L28	L30	1
40	Dylan Porth	ID	600	L16	L14	L34	-B-	L33	L35	1
41	Michael Min	ID	404	L29	-B-	L26	L23	L34	L37	1
42	Gene Tatom	ID	1622	L32	-U-	-U-	-U-	-U-	-U-	0

* As there was a 3-way tie for first place, the title of "Idaho State Chess Champion" is awarded to all three players as co-champions.

** Book #1 was "Aron Nimzovich: A Reappraisal" by Raymond Keene. Book #2 was "Lessons From My Games: A Passion For Chess" by Ruben Fine. Both books personally autographed by 10-time Idaho State Champion, Glen Buckendorf, Jr.

Andrew and Adam win 1st & 2nd Class E (We are now D!)

2010 Idaho Closed, Day 2 & 3

Round 3:  Games today were very hard and really got the blood flowing.  Or was that all the coffee I drank?  My first game was to be my longest and best game against Jim Stark(1563).  Jim is a math teacher in Boise and a steadfast competitor that I have met at almost every tournament I have entered, but have never had the pleasure of playing.  We played a long and arduous game that went for over 4 hours.  Upon one of my trips to the coffee pot, Jay asked if I was growing more gray hairs.  I think the answer to that was easy as Jim finished the tournament in 6th place.  I had to pause during my game for a chuckle when some geese were stomping around on the roof right by the window next to board 1 & 2.  What was funnier was that they started honking like a semi-truck's horn.  I was really falling in love with the tournament room and did not want to leave it after this game.

Barry(left) and Dylan(right)

Round 4:  Egads . . .I now am up against Caleb Kircher(1548).  As Jason Evers put it, "he's tough and plays near 1800."  Additionally, Caleb helped me analyze my game with Jeff the day before and knew exactly how I was going to play the Colle.  So I extensively deviated and he had a devastating pawn thrust in the center which captured a piece.  I countered and could read the nervousness in his body language as my counter attack solidified my position.  Caleb will smile and sit back when in control, and actually will grimace and his body becomes more rigid when in a tight fix.  He was now on alert, very focused and on the defensive.   I was stretched and won back my piece but then goofed by linking my knight and bishop in a check.  His rooks   were then able to seal the deal through some exchanges.  I was able to equalize but the one additional pawn proved to be all that was needed.  Good game . . .I could have played that one better.

Jeff(left) and Garrett(right)

Round 5:  I still have a lot more of the Caro Kann book to dig through and this was readily apparent after my game with Ricky Weathers(1500).  I opened strong but wrecked my position by creating some pawn challenges that left my king's dairy-aire uncastled and stuck in the center on the 7th rank.  I began salvaging my game but Ricky had a very strong bishop that could check on the king or queen-side.  I was even in material and tempo but after I planned an attack that would win two pawns and clear a nice path for my rooks, I blundered by scooping up that second pawn one move too early in my plan.  The brain fatigued, my queen hung, I resigned early.  Nice play, Ricky.  Early to bed, early to rise keeps a man healthy, wealthy and wise.  I wish we had three more days of this.

Katie

Round 6:  My last game pitted me against my host's daughter, Katie(978).  She uses tactics very well and so I had to play very guarded.  After she took a pawn with her bishop, I pinned it to her queen and then began my attack against her kingside pawns.  I gleaned a very interesting score-keeping technique that I am going to use with my club kids.  I noticed that she made happy faces next to moves she was pleased with and frowny faces  for moves that she did not like.  Her bishop move deservedly earned a frowny face.  : )

Jasen works it out for a win

2010 Idaho Closed, Day 1

 

Welcome to the 2010 ICA Idaho Closed State Championship!  Six rounds over three days, 30/120 SD/60 at Boise State University Student Union Building.  Games could go as long as six hours!  A warm and mist morning greeted the 42 contenders for the tournament, and there is an air of expectation that hangs over the lookout room like a helium balloon lifting into the sky.  One of my favorite moments in a tournament is the adrenalin being released as a round approaches and I could feel the butterflies starting to flutter.   There was lot's of friendly and familiar faces-conversing, reminiscing, laughing, and playing warm-up games.  I really like ICA events as it brings out shared experiences and humor that only a chess player would understand.

Emily, Kevin, Katie

Jay Simonson, ICA President, greeted everyone and announced the requisite time controls, rules, and a little story about ipods and cheating in national chess events.  Andrew Uriarte's face drooped as he immediately asked me to re-confirm Jay's ipod decision.  I continued to help folks program their chess clocks.  Wood River brought four contenders to this tournament including:  Adam Porth (1190), Jeff Baggett(1801), Andrew Uriarte(1196), and Dylan Porth(600).

Jeff overlooks Jay

First round match-ups placed me with Jeff, Andrew with Stephen Oberle(1803), and Dylan with Dave Stewart (1516).  It is clear that this tournament is going to be tough as the average rating is 1360 and the  range included 404 - 2000.  Other notables include four past state champions including Jason Evers(1887), Glen Buckendorf(1800), Larry Parsons(2000), and Garrett Reynolds(1933). Glen and Larry are over 10 time champions!  There were three scholastic champions, Phil Weyland(1824), Katie Abderhalden(1562), and Emily Patterson(1463).  For my own personal aspirations, there are 7 Class E players - most under-rated and only 2 prizes!  This is going to be an exciting and tough tournament.

Glenn plays Kevin during Round 1

Round 1:  Maybe I will post my game against Jeff, but probably not.  I attacked too soon and with too little support from the other troops.  Very basic principles to violate as Hugh Myers(1563) needed to point out.  Impatience can destroy a game and the excitement and anticipation of the day might have affected those ponies.   I could tell Jeff was worried for a bit, but as the game progressed, he succeeded in diffusing my 2 knights attacking by challenging with pawns and opening the ranks and files to shift his pieces to effective and efficient defense that I could not deal with.  Jeff felt it was one of his hardest games in the tournament. Thankfully, that kept me from feeling like a very basic patzer!

Jeff Baggett 

Andrew lost and began flailing (like Shane) about his game and how he stayed right in there, but "that was hard, and he [Stephen Oberle] is so good."  I made my expectations of Dylan's games very clear - "this is practice, honey."  Sometimes my little girl thinks I expect her to win all her games and tries to please me with a false sadness.  I love seeing her play chess and more importantly enjoy seeing her solve problems.  Dylan gleefully went to play with Katie after I told her to just learn from her games, move slow, use your time, try some new ideas, and have some fun with your games.  What an angel-puss!  

Dylan plays in her first Idaho Closed!

Round 2:  Pairings are up and so are my spirits!  I am paired against Patrick Abernathy(unr.), Dylan against Jamie Lang(1219), Jeff against Ricky Weathers(1500), and Andrew against Reggie Holmquist(unr.).   The Abernathy's are a strong chess family and I was surprised to discover Pat was unrated.  He played a very strong game and subverted all my attacks and even started a king-side pawn storm in the middle game that gave me problems until he pushed the wrong pawn allowing me to stall the attack and did not open any files as he was trying to do.  I eventually out-positioned him in a nearly 5 hour game.  I was too engaged with Pat to notice what was going on in the other games but the night ended with a win for me, a loss for Jeff, Andrew and Dylan.

Andrew

Idaho State Closed 2010 Pre-tournament

After a seemingly long day teaching all my classes and then sitting through a touchy, feely collaboration meeting aimed at bringing our staff closer together, the 2010 Idaho Closed was finally here and I am off to Boise with my daughter.  Des decided to stay with a friend and ski all weekend.  My goals were simple:  get my children to play in it, beat a >1500, and try to come home with a class prize.

During the previous week, I studied the Caro Kann and the Colle as much as I could between all of my other distractions.  On Tuesday, I was able to attend the Magic Valley Chess Club held at Barnes & Noble and play Barry  and Alexandr.  I certainly was feeling good about my games and looked forward to the challenges that lay ahead.

The Patterson's invited us to stay with them during the weekend so I was also hoping to play some games with the kids and with my friend, Kevin. As I had to be at the tournament early to register players, I went to bed early.  What a fine bed it was!  In fact, I bought some "memory foam" mattresses on the way home and would encourage everyone to get one.  I slept hard and well, but kept thinking about past tournaments on the way to oblivion.

I saw many of these kids . . .

CHESS MOVIE (working title) from Rescued Media on Vimeo.


I saw many of these kids at the Dallas Nationals in December.  I distinctly remember the boy in the cowboy hat. I wonder if Elizabeth Vicary was there?

Sunday Afternoon

Yesterday I found a new chess player that I met at the Hailey Coffee Company, Jeff Baggett.  Jeff is a very strong chess player that used to run the Community School Chess Club.  He currently plays every Wednesday evening at Atkinson's Park Recreation Center with Norman Friedman and Larry Haelzo (please overlook the spelling errors).  Jeff recently began playing in the ICA tournaments and his performance has made him very well respected.  We played on Saturday as a practice session for next weekend when the ICA State Closed Chess Championship will be played.  We both are planning on attending.

Our pleasant Saturday afternoon game was progressing well until the coffee shop was preparing to close.  We then had to blitz the end game, in which I lost.  I opened with the Colle System as white but once again, stepped out of it with a fruitless knight attack that wrecked the position and enabled him to get pieces and pawns ahead.  It is important to stay in theory when playing such a strong player as I did not have enough time in the end game to really put up much of a challenge. (Jeff at the Southern Open, Garrett Reynolds in background).

We met again today to play at the coffee shop.  I opened with (what I knew of) the Caro-Kann but was unprepared for each of us to have pawns tying up the b1 and a1 diagonals.  I opted for a king-side attack and gave up some very important pawn guards.  I also had a bad, white bishop that kept one rook from rescuing  my position.    We analyzed and then played again.  This time I got the bishop developed sooner and had success.  We swapped sides for the third game and I again opened with the Colle as white.  Much better play with ample time.  Our games, 2 - 2.

Jeff will be teaching kids on Tuesday, as I have to be in Twin Falls.  He is going to offer a guess-the-next-move game using Mikhail Tal vs. ?.  He played the game for me and it offers some very unusual and unexpected moves.  I wish I would be there for this.

Gary Kasparov Video

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5112534134900549414&ei=VMYzS72tDZjqqwKnyuT6CQ&q=chess+videos&hl=en#docid=4728324145911578749

good stuff!

Washington Square vid

Last in the DuPont Circle vids

Thursday Chess Club

Cookie dough sales are rolling!  We have sold about 18-20 which will net us $180.  Please try to sell mo' do' so we can at least make about $400.  Remember our goal is $900.  It appears that Rebecca Self and Raleigh Grossbaum are the sales leaders with 9 buckets apiece.

It was a quiet night with only 12 students.  I was able to reiterate chess etiquette and go over the house rules.  There was some moaning and grumbling about recording games but I think it will help most players play better.  It surely did not help me with my two losses, however!

I am looking forward to the challenge of the Idaho Closed next weekend, as are some of our players.

DuPont Circle

Cookie Dough Fundraiser for Chess Club

The forms are in so start selling cookie dough today.  Please collect the money first.  All order forms and money must be turned in by February 22.  Cookie dough is sold in half gallon pails that can be frozen.  They will be delivered to the school at the end of February.  Sell, Sell, Sell.  It will reduce the cost of hotel and registration for the March 20 State Scholastic Tournament.  A Saitek chess clock will be the prize for the most cookie buckets sold.  If you would like to purchase some cookie dough, please contact a chess club member or Mr. Porth before February 22
.

Tuesday Chess Club

Welcome new members:  Megan Jones, Matt Lichtenberg, Quinn Gilman

As chess club is to be a safe and fun activity for all, we are going to revisit these at Thursdays meeting.

Follow school rules.

Room rules:  be respectful of room, opponents, advisor, and of chess.  This IS the royal game.  Show some class, please.

Don't let your rating or points become the deciding factor in your play.  Play and learn from your games.

Mr. Porth is not crabby - I just don't want chess club to be a free-for-all.  Some players are truly trying to improve or practice.  Our coffers are low, so if you haven't paid your dues, please do so ASAP.  Also remember that my science equipment is for my science class.  If you want an explanation of equipment that is out, please ask before touching it.  School rules apply, that is, no rude or offensive behaviors are allowed.

Players need to revisit chess etiquette:
RULES OF ETIQUETTE
1. Every game must begin and end with the players shaking hands.
2. Between the two handshakes, no talking is permitted. "Check" need not be said. Players are responsible for noticing where all of the pieces on the board are located, and what threats are pending.
3. Never do anything to distract any other player in the tournament, especially your opponent.
4. Always use the "touch move" rule.
5. If an illegal move is made, the tournament director should be summoned. In a tournament using a "Sudden Death" time control, the other player receives an extra two minutes when one player makes an illegal move.
6. Never gloat over a victory, or become despondent or hostile following a defeat. It is always best to analyze the game with your opponent, after the game ends, and in a different room from where you played. Leave the playing room quietly when you finish so as not to distract the other people who are still playing.
7. Never comment on a game that is in progress, whether the game is yours or one that you are just watching.
8. The tournament director has the authority to punish breaches of etiquette, and may add or subtract time as a sanction. In extreme cases, players may be forfeited for violating the rules and spectators may be banned from the site.

Go to DuPont Circle on your next D.C. trip