Everything Old is New Again

This song was released weeks before John Lennon's assassination in 1980 and never fails to leave me more than a little depressed.

   Less than 10 days after my friend Bill passed away at the age of 96 I had to confront my own advancing age when I turned 56 the Saturday before last. I didn't really do much confronting because I don’t spend a lot of time considering how old I am. I’m older than some, not as old as others, and that’s about the extent of my thoughts on the subject. One thing I’ve gotten better at as I’ve gotten older is not wasting time. I'm gotten quick to hang up the phone and close the doors on salespeople and I patronize businesses largely based on how little time I have to spend to get what I want. I even try to save time on social media. I like using Facebook but when one of my ‘Facebook friends’ starts posting items or opinions that I find disturbing or people that annoy me start popping up in my feed because of their comments in these posts I just click the button to not show this person's posts in my feed. I save time by not getting annoyed or disturbed and there's a lot less to look at that way too.

  And what do I do with all this time I save by not wasting it? Play one minute chess of course! Not only is a game of chess with each player having one minute to make all their moves incredible fun it also doesn't cost nearly as much time as a game where both sides have 90 minutes for all their moves PLUS an extra 30 seconds for each move like when I played at the Twin Ports tournament in Duluth a couple of months ago. The last time I wrote about my one minute chess escapades on the Internet Chess Club was in March of 2015 when I set a personal high rating at one minute chess of 1619. I then set my sights on trying to better my personal best ICC 3 minute rating set in 2010. That attempt was unsuccessful and on November 1st I was back playing 1 minute chess on the Internet Chess Club. I proceeded to drop my first 6 games to lower my rating exactly 100 points to 1519 and my quest for a new 1 minute rating high was on.

  I was made no progress on getting my one minute high until late September when I suddenly started winning a lot of games on time. This was a sure sign that my normally crummy Mediacom internet service was better than usual. I took full advantage of my blazingly fast internet in this game against NAVARRO-GO that pushed my rating over 1600 for the first time in 18 months.

pgn4web chessboards courtesy of pgn4web.casaschi.net

  In addition to winning games on time I also won a few well played games like this one against NC3-4Me.

  Having fast internet and playing well is a great combination to get a high online rating because in addition to the games I win by outplaying my opponent I also get plenty of undeserved wins when my opponents run out of time in winning positions. Both factors combined in my game against macuco.

  I thought that this game would have given me my new high rating but it left me at 1619, exactly where I was on March 10, 2015. Two days later I woke up on my birthday and since it was a Saturday Kathy and I took Daisy and Baxter on a long 5am walk to the Casey’s for coffee and a beef stick treat. We were home by 6 and I spent some time watching chess on ICC with Harry the cockatiel and then I hit the one minute button.

  A good game that I could have won with more time and could have lost with crummier internet. The draw was good enough to give me the solitary rating point I needed to get to get to 1620 for a new personal best after 1 year, 6 months, 28 days, and 7,372 one minute games.

19 months in the making but well worth the wait!

  After setting my new personal best I headed to Grimes, Iowa to run the latest of my youth chess tournaments. I used to hold the tournaments at St. Francis of Assisi school in West Des Moines but a funny thing happened on the way to summer last spring. After spending a year working with some private students I came up with the idea of a twice a month Saturday afternoon chess class/club with a lesson, homework, and chess play without the pressure of a tournament. I went to the parish office to reserve dates and the person who never gave me any trouble about getting dates for my tournaments told me how busy the summers were with weddings and other functions. When I mentioned I only needed a small classroom and that I was going to make this activity free for St. Francis students while charging everyone else the person who never gave me any trouble about getting dates for my tournaments told me it was “parish policy not to have the facilities used for activities that charged fees.” I said I didn’t see how that could be the policy since it was no secret that I charged entry fees for my tournaments and besides every activity I’ve ever seen at the gym next to my tournaments had a cash box. Then the person who never gave me any trouble about getting dates for my tournaments told me that the parish was doing an audit and I needed to fill out a form for a background check (I had already had one when I started at St. Francis) and my helpers needed to fill out the forms also (even though my helpers were parents paying thousands of dollars a year to have their children attend the school). That made things a little more clear in my mind and I figured that something happened that was being hushed up that made the parish less interested in outside activities. I wrote to the school principal and head of the PTA about my summer activity idea and didn’t waste any more time thinking about it.

  That was in May and I never heard back from anyone. I had an agreement to coach the chess club at St. Francis for free and in return use the facilities for chess tournaments. Given the ‘fees’ policy I felt I could coach at St. Francis and have free tournaments (meaning I needed sponsors), not coach at St. Francis and not have tournaments, or coach at St. Francis for free and still not have the tournaments. As much as I enjoyed working with the kids at St. Francis the reason for my coaching there was to have a place to hold tournaments. I didn’t want to spend time looking for sponsors so in mid-July I wrote to St. Francis to let them know I wouldn’t be available to coach their chess club given their ‘fees policy’. St. Francis then wrote me back to tell me there was no policy about charging fees and that I could still have the tournaments if I would coach the chess club, I gave it some thought but ultimately decided not to continue. I think that once the people who never gave me any trouble about getting dates for my tournaments start making policies as a way to say no it wasn't going to change because I happened to be the beneficiary of some political infighting – I would just have to deal with more made-up policies in the future.

  I told the parents of my students and anyone who asked that I wasn’t planning on having tournaments but within a couple of weeks I had inquiries about holding tournaments in the fall at different sites. One of my students’ parents had an in with the Grimes Community Center and we easily settled on three dates in the fall as a trial run. I normally wouldn’t have had a tournament on my birthday but it just so happened that it was also National Chess Day. I’ve always tried to have a tournament on National Chess Day so I had the tournament on my birthday. It also helped that having the tournaments so early in the month will keep me away from Thanksgiving and Christmas weekends where a lot of players tend to be traveling.

  So after setting my personal best in one minute chess on the Internet Chess Club I opened some of my birthday presents one of which included a pack of Old Trapper beef stick treats from (and for) Baxter and Daisy and headed 60 miles southwest to Grimes, Iowa to run my first chess tournament there. The Community Center is located in the middle of Grimes (a suburb of West Des Moines with 8,500 people) in an old school. The tournament room has space for at least 50 players and there is plenty of room for parents to hang out either in the tournament room or a nearby cafeteria. I can see a long run at the Grimes Community Center. The middle school is starting a chess club which should provide a base of players. The only problem I can see is that even though the Community Center is located just 7 miles away from St. Francis, West Des Moines chess parents tend to not travel outside their own neighborhoods. But that isn’t really my problem and certainly not worth spending any time thinking about.

A great new tournament location in Grimes!

  The tournament itself was successful with 28 players over the day and everyone seemed to have a good time, including me. I hadn’t run a youth tournament in six months and forgot how much fun they are. I also forgot how much energy it takes. I got home at 5, did my after tournament stuff, walked my beagles, and gave my now 56 year old body a well-deserved nap. A few months after saying goodbye to a chess association of six years and ten days after going to my oldest friend's funeral (oldest in terms of age, not in terms of how long we were friends), I have a brand new high one minute rating and a brand new place to hold youth chess tournaments. My best birthday presents were getting new beginnings to take the place of some old endings...

This song was also released weeks before Lennon's assassination yet never fails to encourage me.
A fitting song to commemorate turning the page to 56 years old!

Software Process - An Idea In Practice

  In July I wrote about the process of giving users the ability to sign up for my tournaments using my www.centraliowachess.com website. My first tournament using the self sign up process was on Saturday. There were 52 participants in the tournament with 31 signing up via the website and four more that I set up myself via the website.

  The self sign up option was available in July but I formally announced the option in my tournament email of September 5th. I had a few parents create accounts and add their children but weren’t able to sign them up for the tournaments. I looked into the issue and found out that the company that hosts my site (GoDaddy.com) ends user sessions after five minutes of inactivity. Since I store the login information in session variables, when the GoDaddy web server ends the user session my website won’t know who is logged in and doesn’t know who to display when the signup link is clicked or just won’t show the signup link on the tournament page. This meant that anyone spending five minutes reading the tournament announcement or browsing on another tab or being distracted in some other way would have their session ended and get an error when they tried to sign up for the tournament.

  I think five minutes is an awfully short time for a session to be terminated but it’s not my world –I just live in it. To combat this problem I built in a ‘your session has ended’ page and a timer to route the user to it after five minutes of inactivity. That solved most of the issues with the only remaining problem being that I don't have a message on the ‘session has ended page’ to remind the user that they’d have to log in again.

  A couple of people wrote to ask why they couldn’t see the sign up link and were able to register soon after I wrote back to tell them about the ‘not logged in’ problem. Most users were able to set up an account, add their children, and sign up for the tournament without any help from me. When people emailed me to sign their children up for the tournament, I politely but firmly asked that they attempt to use the self sign up option on my website. If anyone was offended they didn’t say so and at the tournament I got a lot of positive comments about how easy the sign up process was.

  As for me, adding the self sign up option made my job as tournament organizer way easier. During the week of past tournaments I'd have a bunch of emails to both of my primary email addresses from parents registering their children. Many of these emails wouldn't say what section (rated) or which sessions (morning or afternoon) so I'd have to send an email asking and wait for a reply to enter the players in my tournament software. It was time consuming and the chance for error good. This past week was completely different. Whenever someone signed up for a tournament my website sent me an email telling who was signed up and the session and section they were signed up for. Each night after work I’d check the emails from my website to see if anyone signed up and put them in the tournament software if they did. I didn’t have to worry about any missed emails – I just went to the website and crosschecked my tournament software’s player list with the tournament signup list. If the counts were off I knew I missed an email – otherwise I was good to go.

  There were a couple of problems. I had some people sign up online and then not show up. This happens at every tournament although I think it is easier to forget when signing up online by clicking a mouse instead of taking the time to send an email. The other problem was that some parents put their children in both the rated and unrated section. It wasn’t a big deal but I had to remember to find out which section the player was in before the tournament started.

  These small problems were outweighed by the benefits. I already outlined how it made it easy for me to keep track of the signups. I don’t know if the ability to see who has signed up helped attract more players. I do know that it helps with the Okoboji Open and I believe it will help attract players once more parents are aware of the feature. The day after the tournament I was able to easily assemble an email list to let the parents know where they could find the cross tables and pictures because I had the email addresses of everyone who used the self sign up option at my fingertips using an SQL query.

  The tournament itself was quite successful from a participation standard with the most players I’ve ever had for a September tournament. From the sporting perspective the tournament was awesome. The kids had a great time playing, there were enough players for the rated sections in both the morning and afternoon, the parents were happy to have my tournaments back after taking the summer off, my energy level was high, and my students all showed improvement. Most chess games have a winner and a loser and there is nothing that can make a group of chess playing kids uncomfortable like having a sore loser that starts crying or accuses their opponent of cheating or pulls some stunts like making illegal moves or knocking the pieces off the board. There was none of that on Saturday.

  In the last game of the tournament Nate from St. Francis was playing Meg (a girl from another parochial school). Both players had two points out of four which meant there were no prizes on the line, just bragging rights. The St. Francis player was down two pawns in a desperate situation when he set up and uncorked a beauty of a move.

Nate was white and played d7!! Not only does the pawn move allow a check from the ninja bishop on b4 which prevents the bishop from capturing it, it covers the e8 square and prevents the king from stopping the pawn from becoming a queen next move. If I could pull off a move like this in one of my games I'd never stop writing about it!

  Because this was the last game going there was a crowd of kids hanging around watching when Nate played his killer move. With the crowd and the tension I would have understood if Meg had gotten upset as she realized there was no way she could stop the pawn but she just smiled, shook Nate’s hand, and congratulated him on a good game. It was an example of how having a great group of kids and parents make for a fun tournament where everyone is playing games of chess instead of a day where there are winners and losers and competition is king.

  Adding the self sign up feature to my software didn’t all of a sudden imbue the participants with a ‘good sport gene’ but it made my job as the organizer a lot easier which helped free my mind to give more thought to how to dial down the competition aspect and make the tournaments more fun. Enough parents found it easy to use which makes me think my design was more right than wrong. My next project on the www.centraliowachess.comwebsite is to redesign it suing a new toolkit that will make the website adjust its display from a smartphone to a desktop browser while providing an easy to use interface. I’ve finished all the pieces except the self-sign up part and expect to be finished the next time I have a vacation.

Pairings in Black and White

Well worth your time and money!

  After the hectic finish to Saturday night’s games I was one of a group of 20 or so that headed to the El Parian Mexican Restaurant for our annual Saturday night dinner. I sat by Mark Capron, Tim McEntee, Tom Gaul, Sam Smith, Ken Fee, and Frank Whitsell at one end of a long row of tables. I had a great time talking and joking about all things chess and non-chess while chowing down on a giant plate of Pollo Chorizo (chicken, chorizo sausage, and rice). Ken bought my dinner and the staff must have gotten an extra bonus because Eric Bell told me he also paid for my dinner. If I had only known I would have ordered a double portion.

  The guest of honor at the dinner besides our unofficial host Riaz Khan was Grandmaster Mauricio Flores. Aside from being a chess grandmaster, Mauricio is a graduate student in Math at the University of Minnesota and the author of the chess book “Chess Structures – A Grandmaster Guide”. Mauricio brought a few copies of his book to the tournament and they were quickly snapped up and autographed before I even found out they were available. I did get to look at Tom Gaul’s copy and I was quite impressed. The book is less than $25 and over 450 pages explaining in detail many of the common pawn structures in commonsense language that I could understand easily. Mauricio even has a blog where he continues adding to the topics he covers in the book. While the table was talking about chess he mentioned that in his opinion, the Albin Counter Gambit was a great opening choice for below GM players since it is hard for White to keep Black from getting the pawns in the center this opening aims for.

  Mauricio is very quiet but very cool. I took advantage of his mathematics graduate student expertise to ask about my son’s upcoming semester of study in Hungary and winning the Rockefeller award. He knew all about these types of activities and explained these are the type of academic things students need to do in order to get into better graduate schools. We asked Mauricio if he was going to write another book and he said he would like to but he needed a subject. I suggested that he write about what to do when one side has pawns on a7 and b7 vs. pawns on b2 and b3 because whenever I get into one of these positions I always get the worst of it no matter which side I have. Mauricio just laughed and said that could be a page or two in a book but asked how would he fill the rest of it? It was great hanging out with him and other masters like Tim, Dane Mattson, and Okey Iwu along with all the rest of the Okoboji crowd for the night. We closed El Parian down and were back in the Arrowwood Resort by 11 for one more day of chess.

Dinner time at El Parian in Okoboji, Iowa!

  Without any beagles to walk I again woke up as late as I have all year which was a quarter after six. I felt fat and happy after my great evening eating Pollo Chorizo as I headed to the Arrowwood lobby for a free breakfast of coffee, toast, and danish before heading to the tournament room.

  I printed the pairings the night before and as I inspected them in the light of the morning some of them weren't what I would have expected form the computer. I've had this same feeling in years past and even changed some of the final round pairings. I dislike changing the computer pairings because it creates the possibility that I'll miss something and have the same players facing each other twice or having the same colors three times in a row or any other number of organizational no-nos. I’ll be the first to admit I like the comfort of answering any questions with a shrug and pointing a finger at the unfeeling silicon beast. I'll also be the first to admit I want to know what I’m doing and if I’m using the computer I want to know why the computer is doing what it is doing.

  The fourth round was underway on Sunday morning when Mark Capron told me that the pairings in the reserve section seemed off. It was the same thing I noticed in the morning and I said so. Mark is one of the most experienced tournament directors in the state. We both use the Win TD pairing software and when I mentioned I noticed the same anomaly Mark said that I must have the software set to give a high preference to alternating colors. Alternating colors is the practice of giving players the White pieces after a game with the Black pieces and vice versa.

  The morning round of the tournament continued with no problems and very little drama. GM Flores and Jon Reigenborn had already clichéd at least a tie in the open and reserve sections. As I was making the pairings for the last round the only question was which of their pursuers would get the chance to catch up by beating the leader. I paired the reserve section and everything looked as I would have expected with Sam Smith getting a crack at Jon since he was the highest rated player in the group trailing the leader by a point.

  In the open section there were five players a point behind GM Flores : Dane Mattson, Tim McEntee, Bob Keating, Andrew Titus, and James Neal. I would have expected Dane to be paired against the GM since he was the highest rated player of the five (Neal had already played Flores and wouldn't play him again). But the computer spit out Tim as the opponent because that pairing would give the top six players alternating colors. I changed the setting that Mark had told me about and redid the pairings and sure enough it had Dane getting two whites in a row playing Flores. Dane, Bob, and Tim were in the room waiting for the pairings so I decided to ask if they thought I should change the pairings. None of these champion players cared who they were playing or with what color but the consensus was that I should pair the final round the way I paired the previous four so that’s what I did. I have participated and directed other tournaments where players go bonkers over the final round pairings and even seen players withdraw from the tournament if they don’t get their way but Okoboji isn't like that – I'm fond of telling people that this tournament has a shortage of jerks. This shortage is a big part of what makes it a privilege for me to help by directing. I wouldn't be much help if there were a bunch of jerks because while I am many things, one thing I am not is the ‘jerk whisperer’.

  I thought that at next year’s tournament I would change the pairing software to give less preference to alternating colors but after helping at Bethany Carson’s Wellsburg Open tournament this past weekend I’m not so sure. Bethany’s SwissSys pairing software didn't worry about alternating the colors and in the last round there was a weird situation where the top ranked player got three out of four games with the white pieces because the software had given the his last round opponent two games with the white pieces in a row previously (giving a player three games in a row with the same color is very taboo). Clearly this topic is less black and white than the colors of the pieces and I need to spend some time pondering all its arcane aspects before I make a final decision.

  I posted the final round pairings and one player from the open section asked me why he had to play the two lowest rated players in the open section in the final two rounds (he had played the lowest rated player in the next to last round and was scheduled to play the next to last rated player). I looked at the pairings and saw that he had a point – all things being equal he should have been playing a player near his level. I was going to make a new pairing manually when Tim McEntee came walking by so I asked him what he thought. In seconds he saw that the computer made the pairings the way they did because otherwise two players would have had to play each other for a second time (another pairing taboo). This explanation was not acceptable to the player who told me he first had to play two very high rated players and now had to play two very low rated players and couldn't I do anything about this. I said changing the pairings would be too disruptive and I was going to leave them alone. Then this player told me that this was a “deal breaker” and he wouldn't be coming back to this tournament unless maybe he got a refund.

  How about that? A shakedown at a chess tournament! The people in California are probably reading this and hoping their water shortage can be solved as easily as Okoboji's jerk shortage. I've played in a lot of chess tournaments. I've played the best and the worst and I've been the best and the worst. I might not go back to a tournament because it’s noisy or costly or the tournament site is in a sketchy neighborhood or the tournament organizer is a jerk but never because of who I played because who I play is in large part up to me. I would have loved to have played Mauricio Flores or Bob Keating at the Friday Night blitz. I didn't get to because I didn't play well enough to play the top players. Unless I get lucky in my first round pairing I have to earn my way to play the top players or even players at my level and if I don't that’s on me and not on the people running the tournament (which in this case was me sort of but you get my drift). I really didn't know what to make of this guy that wanted a refund because he didn't get to play who he wanted to play. I should have just pawned him off to Jodene but I didn't see her around. I didn't want this guy to go away angry but I did want him to go away so I gave him $30 and told him I respected the fact that he was unhappy and I hoped he respected the fact that there wasn't anything I was going to do about it. 30 dollars is a fairly nice incentive to agree to disagree so we left it at that and I was going to invite him to my next personnel review at work but it was time for the round to start.

  There wasn’t very much drama in the final round. Mauricio beat Tim fairly easily to take first place in the open and Jon got a death grip position against Sam and offered a draw to clinch first place in the reserve. One highlight of the tournament for me was seeing long time Okoboji player Josiah Jorenby have a great tournament. I wrote about Josiah’s sister Destiny last year when she had an excellent Okoboji tournament. Destiny was ill and missed Okoboji this year but Josiah certainly did the Jorenby name proud. He beat a master in the first round, drew another master in the third round, got another draw and a win against players rated over 80 points higher than him and only lost to an expert. I've chatted with Josiah and he seems like a great kid and his family supports Sam and Jodene's tournaments. It was nice to see him perform so well and a pleasure to watch Jodene give him his cash prize. Because he played so well he never had to play any of the lower rated players and never complained about who he had to play either.

  Speaking of complaining, the player who complained about having to play the second lowest rated player in the tournament in the last round won his game and also won a $30 class prize. When Jodene gave him his prize I expected him to give me back the money I had refunded him but he just stuck the cash in his pocket, shook my hand, and walked on by. I think that if I ever see this guy again not only will I invite him to my next performance review at work I'll see if I can't bring him along the next time I have to buy a car.

  I submitted the tournament to get rated by the national office and hung around with Jodene, Dane, and Okey until around nine when I headed for home 60 hours after I left West Des Moines for Okoboji with a cup of Burger King coffee with grounds. I passed by Cylinder around ten and there wasn't a light on in the town. The weather was great and I got home a little after one in the morning. By 4:30 I was walking Daisy and Baxter and resuming my normal day to day routine. It was another tremendous Okoboji weekend for me. I got to meet up with old friends, make new ones, hang out with some incredible people, watch great chess, have the best meal in town (two times!), and I left with a bunch of great stories to tell. I don't mind paying $30 for one of my stories because when I write the book about my travels to Okoboji and Cylinder it will figure prominently in a chapter called “The Okoboji Shakedown” or “Walk On By”.

On the way home from Okoboji, I turned on my amazing iPod's Rhapsody music app.
The first song it played was anthem of Okoboji Shakedown artists everywhere...

My Inner Ripken

  On September 20, 1998 Cal Ripken didn’t play in the Baltimore Orioles home game against the New York Yankees. Normally a player sitting out a game wouldn’t cause a ripple but this was the first game in the Orioles' last 2,633 games that Ripken hadn’t played in. It was the longest consecutive games streak in baseball history. The funny thing was that most of the fans and even many of the Yankee players didn’t know the streak was going to end until the game was underway although it because the top story on the ESPN news crawl once it was realized that the streak was ending. I never thought too much of the Orioles – they seemed too perfect with the ‘Oriole Way’ and manager Earl Weaver’s tantrums and boasting about how his style of waiting for three run homers was the only winning strategy and star pitcher Jim Palmer and his jockey shorts commercials but I loved watching Brooks and Frank Robinson and thought Paul Blair was the greatest defensive center fielder I ever saw. I never feared Ripken when the Yankees played the Orioles and certainly wouldn’t take him over Derek Jeter despite his 2 MVP awards which included the 1991 award as a member of the 67-95 Orioles over Cecil Fielder and his 44 home runs for the second place 84-78 Tigers. I’m not bashing Ripken’s award but in 1990 Fielder became the first person in 13 years to hit 50 homers for the 79-83 third place Tigers yet finished second in the MVP voting to Rickey Henderson because Henderson played on a winning team. I’m not saying Ripken didn’t deserve the MVP award – I’m saying he didn’t deserve it as much as Fielder given the standards of the time.

  To much less fanfare than the end of Cal Ripken’s streak I didn’t have a youth chess tournament in the Des Moines area in February so my streak of 49 straight months with a tournament is over. Attendance at my tournaments has been very uneven this school year. I had the most participants I ever had for a September tournament, the least ever for an October tournament, then the most ever for November and December tournaments.

  I thought I had an upswing going but then I had the lowest January number ever and as icing on the cake I only had two players in the rated (or advanced) section in the afternoon. And the little icing flower on the icing on the cake was that one of the players that was playing in the rated section was Seth from Marshalltown who came with me to help me set up and play for free. I had Seth play the other player in a match but the parents who drove their child down to the tournament were disappointed and I don't blame them since I was not able to deliver the tournament that I advertised.

  My work trip to California in February was a small factor but not a major one in skipping the month. I figured that since my January tournament was late in the month and poorly attended there was no point in rushing a tournament in three or four weeks just to say that I have a tournament every month. I spend about six hours in a month preparing for each tournament and another 13 hours on the tournament day and while I’m sure I put those 20 hours to good use I can’t point to anything that I did with the extra time. In fact, I didn’t notice any measurable extra free time in February.

  I didn’t announce that I wasn’t having a February tournament. I wondered if anyone would notice and I got two emails late in the month asking when my next tournament was. When I set up the March tournament I wanted to avoid parents bringing their children for a rated tournament that I might or might not be able to provide. I made the tournament unrated only with the mention that if enough players wanted a rated tournament I’d offer one. I did have five players for a rated tournament in the morning but in the afternoon I had one player who wanted to play in a rated tournament so I had him play Chandler (who I brought from Marshalltown to help me set up) a two game match. It was again a bummer not to have many players for a rated tournament but at least this month I didn’t advertise something I couldn’t deliver.

  Even without many rated players the attendance in March was just three off the best March attendance I’ve ever had. I don’t understand the exodus of rated players but I don’t have to understand it. I’m getting more unrated players than ever before at the tournaments which means to me that the are still performing a useful function for a large group of players. I have some sadness at the ending of my streak but at the same time it is liberating in a way I couldn’t have predicted. I’m heading to Okoboji to direct the super Okoboji Open tournament for my friends Jodene Kruse and Sam Smith next month and don’t have to set up an April youth tournament just for the sake of a streak or to uphold a tradition. It might be the same feeling Sarah Connor had at the end of the iconic film ‘Terminator 2’ when she said “The unknown future rolls toward us.”

  One streak I hope will never end is my current streak of basketball predictions. After a stellar 4-0 mark last week I have gone 7-1 over the last two weeks and find myself rounding into playoff form with 20 mythical dollars on the plus side. As usual I'll be making my picks using the Betonline.ag lines as listed on the Yahoo Sports page for entertainment purposes only. Tonight's games feature three quality matchups (Hawks vs. Thunder, Grizzlies vs. Mavericks, and Raptors vs. Bulls) but I am going to plumb the depths of the NBA and pick four playoff teams to cover against non-playoff opponents and also pick against the league-worst Knicks who make any team look like a playoff contender.

New York Knicks at Philadelphia 76ers
The league-worst Knicks were on cloud 9 after beating the defending champion Spurs on Tuesday but after a disheartening loss to the league second-worst Timberwolves last night won't be able to cope with the athletic and rested 76ers team on a short road trip to Philly. I'll lay the 6 and a half points and put $100 on the 76ers.

Denver Nuggets at Miami Heat
The Nuggets are travelling from a game in Houston last night to the east coast for a game in Miami against the rested Heat. I look for the Heat to build on their big win against Portland Wednesday and cement their precarious playoff position and will give the 7 points on a $100 bet.

Milwaukee Bucks at Brooklyn Nets
I don't like picking road teams but will make an exception for the Bucks as they will be desperate to break their four game losing streak against the disintegrating Nets. It doesn't hurt that Bucks coach Jason Kidd really likes sticking it to the Nets team he coached last year until he lost a power struggle with GM Billy King. I'll give the Nets 2 and a half points and take the Bucks on a $100 wager.

Washington Wizards at Los Angeles Clippers
Despite the Wizards road win over the red hot Utah Jazz on Wednesday I don't think they'll be able to match up with the Clippers now that Blake Griffin has returned from his staph infection to provide some front court help for DeAndre Jordan and will lay the 6 and a half points on a $100 bet.

Boston Celtics at San Antonio Spurs
After their embarrassing loss at the hands of the league worst Knick on Tuesday the defending champion Spurs beat the Milwaukee Bucks by 11 on the road on Wednesday and return home to meet the resurgent Celtics. I think the Spurs will put be buoyed by their fanatical home crowd and win this game in a blowout so I'll lay the 9 points to win $100.

Idea Gone Wrong

  When I set up my summer youth chess tournaments this year and went to rent the big outdoor shelter at Pioneer Park I wasn't surprised to see that they were still renting the shelter by the half day which meant that my preferred morning and afternoon youth tournaments were out of the question. I set up the morning tournament and was thinking about repeating last years' time odds blitz tournaments but discarded the idea when I noticed that there were going to be adult tournaments in Des Moines on most of my summer dates. This left the options of leaving after the morning tournament or coming up with a new idea for the unused few hours I had the shelter rented for.

  I was watching the 2014 FIDE Candidates tournament in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia during the period of time I was noodling around with ideas and a couple of games that world number 2 player Levon Aronian played caught my eye. Aronian lost to the tournament winner Viswanathan Anand in the first round and resigned when he was about to lose a piece. I saw how Aronian was going to lose the piece but it seemed he would get a couple of pawns. I set up the position against a chess computer and had a lot of trouble winning the game the first couple of attempts until I thought I got the hang of it. At the end of the tournament, Aronian lost yet another game, this time to Sergey Karjakin. This time it was clear to me why Aronian resigned - Karjakin was going to queen a pawn and even though Aronian's pawn was one move away from making a queen for him, some well-placed checks by Karjakin would be able to stop the pawn dead in its tracks. I played this position against the chess computer and easily won the game.

Left: Aronian-Karjakin with White to move and Black to win.
Right: Anand-Aronian with Black to move and White to win.
Aronian resigned both of these positions in the recent Candidates tournament but for lesser players they are worth playing out.

  Playing over winning positions is excellent for practicing what is commonly known as technique. What is easily winning to a grandmaster is not so apparent to a master and what is winning to a master is not so apparent to a class player. At my youth tournaments I often see some players expressing disdain when beginners play a game out to mate a queen or more behind, forgetting that maybe a year or two before they were the player playing the game out to mate because it wasn't yet apparent to them how their opponent was going to win. A so-called 'winning advantage' for one player may be the beginning of a complicated struggle for another.

  The two positions got me thinking I could spend the spare two hours after the morning tournament in the park by going over them for whoever wanted to show up. I called it a 'minicamp' and made a flyer with the positions and mentioning what I was going to talk about. My idea was I’d explain how to win the positions for a short time and then pair the players off to practice playing the position out from each side. In the week leading up to the tournament I got a lot of positive feedback from parents about the minicamp and finally it was time to see how the idea worked in practice.

  The morning tournament ran well enough. The weather was weird in that it was so cool under the covered shelter to the point of the players wanting sweatshirts and jackets from their parents but so warm when they left the shelter that they ripped off their sweatshirts and jackets. The tournament finished, everyone broke for lunch and at 1 I started going over the simple position where the queen had to stop the pawn.

Under the shelter the players were dressed for winter and ten feet away in the sunshine everybody looked warm...

  I had a lot more beginners than I expected so my explanation of how the queen would stop the opposing pawn from queening by itself took much longer than I intended. That was a small problem compared to the winds that had kicked up between the end of the morning tournament and the start of the mini camp. I've been in Pioneer Park for four summers and while there had been an occasional gust of wind, the winds this day were blowing the boards and pieces off the tables. I had a demonstration board set up on a shelter post which blew off almost as soon as I put it up. Luckily I've lived in Iowa long enough to know to always have a roll of duct tape at my disposal and I taped the board securely to the post and was able to get though my explanation of the position.

  Once we had finished our discussion of the position, I had the players pair off and asked them to try to win and defend the position from either side. A few players did just that but all of the beginning players had no interest in playing the position, they just set up the boards and starting playing chess. It wasn't what I had planned on, but I very rarely see a reason to force people to do things they don’t want to do and I didn't see a reason to do it here either. I went over the position with the more advanced of the participants, and then we went over the second more complicated position by ourselves as the beginners kept on playing. All the efforts at playing were complicated by the occasional massive gusts of wind that would blow all the pieces and the boards all over the shelter. As the ending time of 3pm approached, the players left, state champ Tim Mc Entee (who came by to visit) sorted out the windswept pieces back into complete chess sets and in no time my car was packed up and ready for me to head home.

  It was great that most of the kids had a couple of extra hours to play chess but a week later I have to say that the idea of having a group chess lesson was an idea that just didn't work for the players that come to my tournaments. I don't think it was a bad idea but it was certainly poorly executed. The windy weather didn't help but leaving the mini-camp open to all left me open to exactly what happened – a majority of beginning players that didn't have the patience to sit and listen to a talk on a position for 15 minutes or play test it for a half hour afterward. And having made the decision to have an open activity, having a fallback position would have made some sense. For example, having some puzzle sheets on hand to illustrate some of the key points I was trying to make in the lecture may have kept the beginners engaged and made everything run smoother.

  I suppose it's a case of live and learn but in any event since a local church has offered to host the youth tournaments for the rest of the summer I'll be mothballing the mini-camp idea and getting back to an idea that has worked out spectacularly – the morning and afternoon chess double header tournaments. Trying out new ideas is important in all walks of life but it is equally important to recognize when an idea is not a keeper or just doesn't work. I think the minicamp idea is a good concept but it clearly requires a lot more work than I'm willing to put into it at present to make it a successful idea.

My tournament/minicamp may not have gone as planned, but don't cry for me since as this video clip shows I have been officially labelled a WINNER by the Iowa Lottery Commission and the Bondurant Git 'n' Go!

An evening with C.A.

Meet C.A. and his Red Solo Cup!

  As great as the Okoboji Open was this year, there was one glaring problem: The hotel where the tournament was booked a fraternity party from the University of Northern Iowa for the same weekend as the tournament. When I heard that the hotel was full for the weekend I figured that maybe there was a wedding or a reunion but I knew differently when during the first round of the tournament Friday night there were all these college age kids filling up coolers with ice and rolling luggage carts stacked with cases of beer and liquor and boxes of wine in a seemingly never ending caravan to their rooms.

  College kids were running around in the halls until the wee hours on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Many of the players who stayed in the hotel told me that the noise woke them up or kept them from sleeping and a few told me how someone would bang on their door screaming to be let in because they thought it was their room or their friends room. I had two encounters with the college crowd, one direct and one indirect. On Saturday night, I was going to give Ken Fee and Frank Whitsell from the Kansas City Chess Club a ride to the El Parian restaurant for the annual Okoboji dinner. Everyone had left and I was still waiting for Ken and Frank. I called Ken and he told me they couldn't leave their room yet and would be down in a bit. When they finally came down they told me that this drunk college girl said she was locked out of her room and begged to use their bathroom. They let her in and she proceeded to throw up all over their room and they had to call room service for a cleanup and that's why they were late getting to the lobby.

  To a person, the staff at the hotel was super helpful and very embarrassed by the fact that the management had made the decision to host a bunch of loud, drunk, vomiting college students. This embarrassment wasn't just for the chess tournament – the hotel advertises itself as a place you can bring the family and offers a Romance Package starting at $169 with champagne, chocolate covered strawberries, and a 'rose-petal turndown'. I hope no one bought the romance package for the 'frat party weekend'. I may be old-fashioned but is there anything that says romance less than some drunk college guy banging on the door of your $169 romance suite (based on double occupancy - I found threesomes, etc... are extra when I researched this) because they think it's their room? The only less romantic thing I can think of is maybe some drunk college student begging to use your bathroom and vomiting all over your 'rose-petal turndown' and chocolate covered strawberries. And the only thing I can think of less romantic than that is if the champagne had been opened and got vomited on also!

  There were two moose sized policemen patrolling the hotel both nights - this was a first. The policemen were friendly and great about keeping the kids away from the tournament but there were only two of them and they are policemen and not hall monitors and there was only so much they could do about the children (who were customers of the hotel, after all) yelling all night and banging on doors and exercising their regurgatory rights. Booking a frat party at the same time as a chess tournament wasn't the most synergistic idea I've ever seen. Perhaps the next time the frat party weekend could be paired with a convention of vomit collectors (Yes there is such a profession and you can read about it here) since they would be right at home or the next meeting of the local or regional insomniac support group (perhaps this one would do) since they probably wouldn't be sleeping much anyway.

  I received a lot of compliments about the playing site - it was the people staying at the hotel that had the problems. The tournament wasn't interrupted directly except for Sunday morning when 50 or so college kids gathered in the breakfast room next door to the tournament room and started yelling and screaming. I asked the front desk to see if they could quiet them down but Jodene just went into the breakfast and yelled 'QUIET' and told these kids that they had been making noise all night and now it was the chess players turn to have some quiet. I was expecting some of these kids to tell her to shut up or curse at her or just continue making their noise but to their credit they quieted down, ate their breakfasts, and headed off to do whatever hung over fraternity college kids from the University of Northern Iowa do on a Sunday afternoon after breakfast. Don't let the fact that Jodene is a nice person and has cerebral palsy fool you - this is one tough customer if you get in her way!

  Up to this year I wrote about what a great place this hotel was to stay when I publicized the chess tournament because it always has been. I slept like a rock both nights because I use headphones to listen to music on my amazing iPod when I sleep. And since my next door neighbor's drug dealing business in Marshalltown leads to banging doors at all hours of the night (My neighbor Ernie isn't a 3 time participant of Marshall County's 10 Most Wanted for nothing) it would have taken a gunshot to wake me up and maybe not even then. I would have no problem staying at the hotel in the future but I don't see how I can write about the room rate or in any way encourage people to stay there during future Opens until I know that the hotel is willing to turn away this particular client base. Luckily there are plenty of hotels and motels in this resort town.

  So that was my indirect involvement with the leaders of tomorrow. On Friday night after the first round I had a more intimate encounter. When all the games were done, I was sitting alone in the tournament room at my computer loading up the games and pictures to my website when a well-dressed young man came in the room. I thought for a second that he was registering for the tournament but since he smelled like an alcohol sampler and had a cup of what appeared to be vodka and orange juice I figured he was one of the frat party kids. I thought he may be from Marshalltown since the cup he was holding was a 'Red Solo Cup', the drinking symbol made famous in country singer Toby Keith's song of the same name and the logo approved by Marshalltown in 2012 to welcome the bicyclists as they stopped overnight for the annual RAGBRAI ride across the state.

  I said hello to my guest and he said "I'm C.A. and I'm drunk and high on cocaine!" His name really isn't C.A. but if he graduates from college I may end up working for him and I'd hate to antagonize a future boss so I'll use a fake name. I gave my name and asked if C.A. was from Marshalltown. C.A. said he was from West Des Moines and was here with his frat and asked me what I was doing on the computer. I explained that I was loading the games and pictures to my website. C.A. liked my website and asked me if I wrote it and I told him I did. C.A. then told me he was going to UNI for Information Technology but he was failing his PHP class and was $20,000 in student loan debt and was going to flunk out of school.

If C.A. ever decides to give up his Red Solo Cup for some chess play, he met the right person in Iowa State Chess Association President Eric Vigil.

  I told C.A. I felt sorry for him and I did a little anyway even though he would be a little less in debt if he would drink less and maybe not get high on cocaine either and it might even give him time to study for his PHP class. We talked for a bit and C.A. told me that he didn't know what he wanted to do with his life and he got drunk and high because he was failing in school and was going to be in debt without a college degree. I tried to cheer C.A. up by telling him that even if he flunked out of school by the time the next election rolled around there would probably be legislation to forgive a large part of all the student loan debts that everyone seems to have. That seemed to brighten C.A.'s mood a bit and he started asking me about my website and what school I attended to learn programming and was unable to comprehend the fact that I never went to college for programming. Of course, C.A. had a hard time comprehending much of anything so I changed the subject to areas more in C.A.'s wheel house by asking him how much he had to drink, if he snorted his cocaine out of a hundred dollar bill, and if he did could I have one as a souvenir?

  The answers were a lot, no, and no. At this point Will Liang came into the room to say hello. I'm a people person and since C.A. had introduced himself to me the way he had I thought it would help us to bond if he knew that I saw him as he saw himself so I introduced C.A. to Will by saying "Have you met C.A.? He is drunk and high on cocaine." Will's eyes got a little big and C.A. laughed and then I introduced Will to C.A. by mentioning how Will was the father of the 10 year old world chess champion. I was going to ask C.A. if he snorted his cocaine out of a 50 dollar bill so I could ask for one as a souvenir when C.A. asked Will what he did for a living and they talked a bit about the sacrifices that Will and his family make as the family of a chess prodigy. C.A. couldn't quite comprehend the concept of sacrifice but C.A. was having a hard time comprehending much of anything and mentioned that he didn't know what he wanted to do with his life. Will just laughed, told C.A. that he should do whatever I said to do, and that I was a very wise man. We talked a little bit and then Will wished us both goodnight and left. C.A. and I were alone again.

  I asked C.A. if he played chess and he said yes but he didn't remember how the pieces moved. Then my friend Sam Smith came into the tournament room and I said "Sam, Have you met C.A.? He is drunk and high on cocaine." Sam's eyes got a little big and C.A. laughed and rather quickly the subject turned to C.A. not knowing what he wanted to do with his life. Sam told C.A. that he should find his passion and put all he had into it.

  After a few minutes, the Iowa State Chess Association (IASCA) President Eric Vigil came in with another IASCA board member. They had just arrived and were going to start play on Saturday and I introduced the pair to C.A. by saying "Have you met C.A.? He is drunk and high on cocaine." Their eyes got kind of big and C.A. laughed and we all made some small talk and soon the subject turned to C.A. not knowing what he wanted to do with his life.

  Eric had much the same advice as Sam about finding something you loved to do and suggested that C.A. play some chess and handed him his IASCA presidents' card. The IASCA board member with Eric suggested that if C.A. wanted to get ahead he should "never tell anyone the truth". My eyes got kind of big and the IASCA board member didn't laugh. I think not telling anyone the truth is probably as hard as telling the truth all the time and as I found out this past week this fellow can't even follow his own advice since on April 23rd he sent me an email about a West Des Moines youth club he was starting and said (and I quote) "I do not intend to runs (sic) tournaments" but on Saturday I was forwarded an email from him to a chess parent who is helping with the club dated April 18th saying (and I quote) "I will have a rated tournament once month (sic) on Saturday." I guess it's good he can follow his own advice half the time assuming he was telling one of us the truth.

  I'm a fairly big believer in telling the truth whenever possible and I also believe that is almost always possible to tell the truth so I mentioned my own notion that anyone can do anything they want as long as they are willing to suffer the consequences of their actions and also mentioned that I occasionally pay a steep price for the consequences of my actions. I was mostly talking about my penchant for saying what I see without any sugarcoating but it really applies to all walks of life. You can do what you want but you have to be willing to take the hits and pay the price. I wasn't much different in high school than C.A. was that weekend. I was drunk and high all the time although I never traveled half a state away to get wasted for a party weekend like C.A. and his cohorts and never borrowed a penny to go to college. When I wasn't willing to pay the consequences for that lifestyle anymore I straightened up. I try to be a truthful person (sometimes painfully so) and there are consequences for that also but in my experience I have found that being untruthful (or politic as some may say) carries even more unpleasant consequences. Having said all that preachy sounding stuff I didn't use C.A.'s real name so I think it can be safely said that I am as much a work in progress as the person who thinks that 'dishonesty is the best policy' and as much a work in progress as are we all.

  As I was opining on my own philosophies of life I had a rare moment of epiphany! I suddenly knew what C.A. wanted to do with his life and I said "C.A. I know what you want to do with your life! You want to get drunk and high on cocaine!" Everyone laughed except C.A. and I because we both knew I was serious. C.A. said "No, I don't want to get drunk and high." To which I replied "OK. So you don't want to get drunk and high! That's what you want to do with your life!" After this breakthrough we spend a few minutes refining C.A.'s ambitions and we decided to remove the word 'not' to give things a more positive spin and determined that what he wanted to do with his life was 'to be alcohol and cocaine free'. Satisfied that one of life's many problems had been solved, the group broke up and everyone left the tournament room except me. I finished loading the games and pictures, cleaned up some emails, and then C.A. came back for a few minutes because he said the cops were looking for him because he spilled his drink on some lady. Eventually, the coast cleared and C.A. and I left the tournament room for our respective beds.

  I met C.A. the next day outside the tournament and while he was (and I quote) "never been this hung-over" he did remember my name and much of our talk. I had an odd number of players and offered to let him play in the tournament for free but he didn't want to. I felt pretty good that after 19 years of C.A. not knowing what he wanted to do with his life, after just a couple of hours with me he knew what he wanted to do with his life. I think being alcohol and cocaine free is an OK thing to do with your life but if C.A. had agreed with my first conclusion that he wanted to get drunk and high on cocaine with his life that would have been fine by me also. After all, I was just there to help. As much as I've been poking fun at C.A. in this post I have to admit that he is way ahead of where I was at his age. He's 19 and knows what he wants to do with his life – I'm 53 and I still don't know what I want to do with my life although I suspect I may have a future in social work.

2014 Okoboji Open – The Tournament

  As entertaining as it was getting to Okoboji (I wrote about it here last week), the tournament itself was one of the more interesting I’ve been around, speaking both as a tournament director and amateur writer. I really hit the daily double this year by being able to direct Tim Mc Entee's Expert Open in February and the Okoboji Open in April, which are the only two tournaments I'll direct in 2014 aside from my monthly youth tournaments that aren't quite in the same league. Both tournaments had lots of drama on the board and unique people away from the board. But I wasn't there to just hang around and soak in the atmosphere - I was there to help by directing the tournament.

John Bartholomew, Tim Mc Entee, Oke Iwu, and Awonder Liang provided most of the over the board drama at the tournament. Unfortunately, my idle chatter got in the way.

  As a tournament director I was competent enough with only two glaring errors and just as I have my students go over their losses before their wins when they show me their tournament games I'll take this opportunity to mention what went wrong before what went right. After the fourth round, John Bartholomew, Tim Mc Entee, and Okechukwu Iwu were tied for first place. Oke and I were talking after the fourth round and I mentioned that since he was higher rated than Tim, he would likely be playing John, the top seed with the white pieces. Oke agreed and went to lunch and I expect he was mentally preparing himself to play the top seed. Once all the games finished, I paired the round and the computer showed Tim playing John. Tim and John were both hanging around and when I expressed my surprise they both said they expected to be playing each other because the rule about having the players alternate colors (Oke would have had double whites in the last two rounds) would take precedence over Oke's higher rating because the rating difference wasn't enough to justify a switch. I felt about two inches tall when Oke came back and I had to tell him he wasn't playing John with the White pieces but instead was playing the 10 year old world champ Awonder Liang with the Black pieces. Oke lost rather quickly and I don't know if it was because he had prepared for John instead of Awonder but all the same I should have just kept my mouth shut and my opinions to myself or at least just put some temporary results in the computer and printed them out when I talked to Oke about the parings.

  My other mistake could have been a disaster. On Saturday morning instead of putting up the 3-day reserve section round 2 pairings I reposted the round 1 pairings from a sheet I should have thrown away! I was very lucky that one of the players came up to me and mentioned he was playing the same person again. I made the quick switch so it was a case of no harm no foul but like I said, it could have been a real mess if the players hadn’t questioned who they were playing and just sat down to play. My other errors were putting up the cross tables for the open section two times (and no crosstable for the reserve section) before the last round and forgetting to get the picture of the master players before the fourth round on Sunday morning. I ended up getting the picture a little after the final round started but didn't even get that right since I missed getting Oke in the picture and had to put him in as an inset when I got home and realized I missed him. Two of my mistakes involved Oke so I guess the old saying about 'When it rains it pours…' has some merit. Last week I wrote about 'Slappy' on the road crew and this week I get to write about 'Slappy' directing a chess tournament. 'Slappy' is my pet term for that person who has a job but doesn't seem to get anything done or done right like the road crew guy that just stands there or the clerk at the Wal-Mart express register that spends five minutes chatting with the person in front of you and then you get to wait an extra couple of minutes because they rang something up wrong or there is a price check. I know there just has to be a niche market for a 'Slappy' blog and merchandise just waiting for the right entrepeneur.

  Since I've gone over what didn't go right I think I'm entitled to give a mention to what did go right (the entitlement mentality at work!). The pairings were up quickly and correctly, I never had four people sitting down at the same board (not so easy when there are four sections starting at different times), and when the players got low on time I was right where I needed to be, standing nearby keeping an eye on the games and being available in case of any questions or problems. Of course when you have a bunch of great sportsmen and top level players like there are at this tournament it is rare occurence when I need to be consulted. One time I was asked about whether a player could get two minutes added to his clock when his opponent made an illegal move but otherwise I was like a shadow, there but unnoticed and exactly as it should be.

   In the 55 hours I was in Okoboji, I got to play exactly one game of chess – And I use the term 'play' very loosely. I competed in the simul against John Bartholomew and did a reasonable impression of 'Slappy' plays chess. Maybe the Britt road crew has a job opening...

pgn4web chessboards courtesy of pgn4web.casaschi.net

  There were only six players in the John’s simul this year but 2011 Iowa champ, master Bob Keating played a great game and eventually was the last man standing. The pair put the game on a clock and went man-on-man and finally agreed to a draw just minutes before the 6pm start of the three day tournament. I asked them if they wanted to switch to the two day section so they could relax but they both wanted to play. Right in the first round, John allowed a huge attack and a draw by perpetual check to Life Master Jim Ellis who was rated 500+ points below John. I played Jim two years ago at a CyChess and wrote about how he had a stroke and petitioned to have his rating floor removed by the USCF. He has a lot of chess ability and how he plays has a lot to do with how he is feeling that particular day. Anyway, the draw gave John little room for error in the rest of the tournament and the open section had a wide-open feel that anything could happen and anyone could win.

As the tension mounted in the Awonder Liang - Dane Mattson game,
more and more players gathered to watch the game.

  For the second year in a row Awonder Liang came to Okoboji to play. Last year Awonder was the reigning World Under 8 year old chess champion and last December he won the World under 10 year old chess championship (there is no 9 year old world championship). For the second year in a row, Awonder got in a bad position in severe time trouble against a master player and for the second year in a row he kept moving super quick, posing problems for his opponent, and winning the game when his opponent got into time trouble. As you can imagine, the game attracted a lot of attention from the other players and since I was keeping an eye on all the time pressure games I got a chance to snap a picture of the players and onlookers for the second year in a row also. I didn't talk to Awonder but I did get a chance to chat with his dad, Will. Awonder received an invitation to represent the US at the World Youth Championships in South Africa this September and Will is hard at work to find funding for the trip and to get grandmaster coaching for Awonder. After the tournament he told Jodene, Oke, Dane Mattson, and me a lot of stories about his and Awonder's experiences the past six months in Dubai for the World Championships and Reykjavik, Iceland and just about being the parent of a chess prodigy.

  The Open had a fantastic finish on Sunday as John (who had won his two games on Saturday to get to second place) beat Awonder in the morning and in the afternoon he played Tim Mc Entee with the championship on the line. Tim is about as good a friend as I have in the chess world. When he semi-retired from chess in 2009, I wrote his 'chess obituary' and also predicted that he would eventually return to competitive chess. Tim continued to support the Okoboji tournament and got back to playing on a regular schedule last year, culminating in winning his 4th state championship in March. It was great to see him playing at such a high level. Tim looked to have an advantage against John in their matchup but eventually John prevailed in a titanic struggle and showed what a great champion he is by coming from behind to win his fourth Okoboji Open in a row.

Destiny on her game!

  Along with the Open section, there was also a reserve section going on for players rated under 1600. Daniel Johnson, a player who got his chess start playing in my youth tournaments seven years ago and was playing in his first Okoboji Open, won all his games to win the tournament. My friend Sam Smith, who helps Jodene with the Okoboji tournament and runs the Jackson Open that I've gone to the last two years, was a half point behind Daniel and played him in the last round for the championship. I know Sam wanted to win the Reserve tournament in the worst way but couldn't pull it off and settled for third.

  One of the games that caught my interest from the reserve section was the Sunday morning game of Destiny Jorenby. I played Destiny at the 2012 Jackson Open and have met her dad, brother Josiah and her at the last 2 Okoboji and Jackson Opens. When I played Destiny, I was very impressed with her play but at that tournament and the subsequent times I saw her games she would get a big advantage but let her opponent confuse her with tactics and lose. In her Sunday morning game, Destiny got a big advantage and her opponent tried to confuse her, but instead of getting confused she got tough and turned the tables on her higher rated opponent.

  While not at the level of the master games in the Open section, this was a real nice win by Destiny. Her opponent threw all kinds of tricks at her and not only didn't she blink, she played some neat tricks of her own. Destiny won 3 of her 5 games which may sound slightly above average at first blush but she only lost to the winner and second place finisher of the tournament. It was a very impressive performance and I expect even better results in the future.

Doctors, lawyers, basketball coaches, piano teachers, politicians, commodity traders, and 10 year old national and world champions... just part of the amazing variety of chess players at Okoboji!

  I wrote for the chess audience about the tournament here and here and when I'm writing for the chess audience I focus on the results and the 'road to first place' because most of that audience are interested in who won what and how. When I'm writing for my blog I write about the things that are notable to me and they aren't often the results. Two weeks later the things about the tournament that stick with me are my mistakes and near mistakes, watching Destiny playing this great game over the course of a couple of hours, rooming with Sam on Friday and Sam’s friend Joel Saturday night, giving a lower rated young player from South Dakota some advice on taking his time and not trading down when behind and watching him execute it, of course the annual Saturday Night dinner, and just hanging around with the players that I only meet once or twice a year and getting to meet and hang out with a lot of people that I'd never met before. When I'm playing in a tournament I've had people tell me I'm like a mushroom and I agree because in that setting I'm the type that likes to keep to myself and not get all chatty. Not that there's anything wrong with mushrooms: they are an incredibly versatile sort of fungus that can be used as food, poison, medicine, and even as a psychedelic recreation. But there are a lot of other players that are more on the sociable side or like to talk as a way of relaxing before or during a game. When I’m not playing I enjoy meeting and chatting with anyone and everyone and the variety of great people I get to hang out with for a weekend is what makes the Okoboji Open so special for me.