The only major issue came up when one of the advanced players was so upset after his first round loss where he threw away a drawn game he was going to withdraw. I didn’t want to leave a player without a game for each of the 3 remaining rounds, but I managed to talk him into playing. He won his next game but then lost to Iowa Girls Champion Bethany Carson and withdrew for real with one game left. Luckily, by that time the other tournament had finished and I got one of the intermediate players to fill in for a game.
Beginner tournaments are more casual. You don't normally need a clock or even write down your moves. Lee's son Sam Cole is at the front right. His opponent Dan Troxell was playing in his first tournament other than our Thursday night quick chess matches. Sam has been playing in these types of tournaments for 6 years. In this matchup, tournament experience won out as 6th grader Sam defeated the 50+ year old computer programmer.
While the beginner games rarely took more than 40 minutes, the advanced section allowed each player 1 hour to make their moves so the game can last 2 hours. Even this is a fairly quick time limit as some of the tournaments allow each player 2 and a half hours and you can easily play chess for 15 hours in one day! In this picture, Iowa Girls Champion Bethany Carson (back left) took all 2 hours to beat Tim Crouse who is 2 rating classes above her. Bethany's dad Tim Carson (front right) also pulled off a 2 class upset over Tim Harder while sitting at the same table. The intense concentration you see here is commonplace at advanced tournaments.
The tournaments went very smoothly, with Daniel, Charity, and Sarah Faith Carson finishing in 3 of the top 4 spots of the beginner/intermediate section. They had to play each other, but that was only after they had beaten all the other top players in their section, some of whom were higher rated than they. In the advanced section, experts Dr. Bob Keating and 13 year old Kushan Tyagi tied for the first place trophy. I had planned for a playoff game in case of a tie, but Kushan wanted to go to a party in Ames and so abdicated his playoff rights, leaving Keating with the trophy. When I mentioned that I had turned 50 the day before, the players and parents sang happy birthday to me after the awards ceremony.
Once the tournament ended and all the prizes were given out, I had a whole new set of tasks. I cleaned up the rooms (but forgot to throw out the garbage – oops), packed up the sets and boards, and entered the tournament results with the national office to get rated. I took a break after that to watch the end of the Yankees sweep of the Twins.
The next morning, I entered the game scores from the advanced section into my computer and loaded the games and the pictures onto the internet. Finally, I wrote a tournament summary and posted it to the state’s chess web site. And then I was almost done. I had originally scheduled the date at random and the point of the Open section was to give my son Matt a chance to play in a tournament close to home, but Saturday was the only day he could take the SAT test this month. Saturday also happened to be National Chess Day and the USCF was soliciting stories of the day’s chess events so I repackaged my article and submitted it in the hopes of getting some publicity for our chess club. Not only did USCF web site put my submission in their National Chess Day article today, my picture of Keating and Tim Killian was on the banner of the article, and there was even a picture of me way at the bottom. You can see the article here.
Running a tournament is a lot of work, but it was a lot of fun for me because everyone except the guy who withdrew had a good time and it is an excellent way for me to use my talents to help others. The players and parents were very appreciative and a freewill donation to the Salvation Army was well received. And getting my 15 minutes of fame on the national web site was an extra bonus. I don’t run tournaments for my personal benefit, but it was pretty cool to show my wife when I got home.
Nothing like the happy faces of the prize winners at a chess tournament.
1 comment:
Call me:
Tammy@Times-Republican 641.753.6611. X 233
Post a Comment