A Missed Opportunity

I had planned to play at the CyChess Sunday, but the forecast of 1 to 3 inches of snow derailed my plans. There was no snow and my caution was in vain, but I did have a nice consolation prize watching my favorite football team, the New York Giants beat the hated Dallas Cowboys to claw their way back to a game behind the ‘boys and the Eagles in the division. Maybe they can get hot and win it all like they did 2 years ago. They were only a wild card that year also.

  For my chess year I went +9 -5 =8 in standard time controls, gaining 13 rating points. I lost 8 quick rating points, owing mostly to my only scoring a draw in my last 3 games against Jaleb Jay, who I outrate by 400+ points. All in all, a successful year. Here is my best game from 2009 - a win against Gerald Hawkins in the 2009 Iowa Class B championship on May 23rd. I had just lost a game to Gerald 6 days previously in the most excruciating fashion by winning a piece and then going to pieces and resigning 4 moves later so this was a large measure of vindication.

pgn4web chessboards courtesy of pgn4web.casaschi.net

Twins Sons of Different Mothers

  President Obama gave a speech on Tuesday night outlining his reasons for adding more troops to Afghanistan. It sounded a lot like the speech Bush gave for adding more troops to Iraq (the 2007 Surge). While Obama addressed some of the criticisms that were leveled at Bush’s speech (exit strategy, holding the host country accountable, a gentler tone), if you just looked at the actions of our last 2 presidents, you would never guess that they were polar opposites of the political spectrum. From adding troops to bank bailouts to stimulus packages, they are in lock step. Obama is supposedly the Anti-Bush, black not white, young not old, urbane not country, smart not stupid, thoughtful not impulsive. I believe the differences are in style only, not substance. The Democrats in Congress grumble about the new troops in foreign lands, but they will go along with Obama just like they did with the Bush Iraq Surge. The Republicans in Congress grumbled about the Bush bailouts, but just enough voted for it to have it pass. When no republican votes were needed for the Obama stimulus, none were provided. When 3 republican votes were needed in the Senate to pass the Obama stimulus, 3 were found.

  The only real differences I see in the so-called 2 party system are the 2 religious issues of our time, abortion and gay tolerance. Moderate Republicans complain that the anti-abortion and anti-gay wing majority of the Republican Party is forcing them to switch to the Democratic Party. It makes it seem that the Republican Party is the party of intolerance. Where is the anti-abortion and anti-gay wing of the Democratic Party? They must have been forced out a long time ago. When it comes to any issues other than those, can the 2 parties be distinguished from one another? To quote the last line from George Orwell’s Animal Farm: "Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."

One Sick Dog

  Last Wednesday night, my 15 year old dog Queenie went into the backyard and tried to scramble under a fence chasing a possum. On 2AM Thanksgiving morning, she started howling in pain for a few minutes and was limping on her right leg. In the morning, she seemed good and took a long walk, but would yelp occasionally and start limping. I gave her some aspirin through out the day and took her to the vet on Friday. The diagnosis was some strained muscles in her back and neck and we have 3 sets of pills to give her (steroids, pain killers, and a stomach med to keep the steroids down). She is still limping and yelping occasionally, is only walking a few blocks at a time (her normal is at least a mile a day) and doesn't have much of an appetite. When a dog is that old, every little thing is a cause for concern and this is more of a big thing. I'm hoping the steriods are causing the appetite loss and she'll be more like her old self in a week or so.

A new era...

  After being a punching bag for our last few Marshalltown Thursday night blitz chess tournaments, I was happy to win last Thursday's tournament. I had to beat my son Matt in the last round. He has won 4 of the tournaments and had won his first 16 Marshalltown blitz games. He outranks me by 300 points and is 2-0 against me this season, but I got to play White and 'dulled' the game down until he gave up a pawn for the attack. Something went wrong with the attack, I managed to trade queens and won the ending with my extra pawn. A big weapon when playing a stronger player is the threat of a draw game. The better player will usually give up something to imbalance the position and hope to outplay the lower-rated player from there.

  I was sad to see that this year's edition of the Iowa State Chess Association (IASCA) grades chess championships draw 102 players, the 3rd lowest total since at least 1998. I took over the Iowa scholastic chess in 2006 after the lowest attendance of 82 players, down from the decade high of 187 in 2000. There were many reasons for the decline, most notably the disintegration of the Regina(Iowa City) and Center Point chess clubs. The tournament director (Steve Young) didn't help matters by taking it upon himself to berate the parents who did bring their kids when attendance was poor and this tended to derail the fine organizational work of Don Ronnfeldt. Traditionally, the scholastics are handled by someone who has a group of players in their town to provide an attendance base. Since I had no such base, I worked on communications by publishing a monthly web column, and sending e-mails to all the schools to let them know about our tournaments. This would get me in touch with schools and individuals interested in chess programs and I would get 3 or 5 or 7 players from these schools to come to the tournaments. The next 2 years, attendance at the grades tournament reversed the freefall, going from 82 to 111 to 131 players. Of course nothing recedes like success and quickly traditional tournament sites started drying up. The Iowa City scholastic contact (Steve Young) would not get me any tournament dates there for IASCA events (although he could find dates for his tournaments). To be fair to Steve, I wouldn't let him help with events after the money disappeared from the 2 events I did run with him in 2006. I helped with a tournament in Ames and the scholastic chess contact there told me point blank that Ames was his territory and he would fight me tooth and nail to keep me from running IASCA tournaments there. This left me running the main IASCA events in Des Moines and Cedar Rapids with the smaller tournaments in Creston, Marshalltown, Ankeny, or whoever would host them.

  The last straw for me and IASCA scholastics was in January 2008, when Jim Hodina decided to run a tournament in Cedar Rapids the same day as the state High School championship in Ankeny. Normally this tournament loses money and so to compensate, I'd hold a youth trophy tournament that would get me to the break even point. Jim and Eric Stumpf from Cedar Rapids had asked me if I would mind if they held an unrated tournament with minimal prizes on that date for kids in their K-4 school and I said that was OK with me since that type of player doesn't travel. Then Jim started sending me flyers from the tournament and lo and behold, it was the exact same format as my youth trophy tournament and was open for players in grades K-12. I had helped Jim out by directing the Iowa Open for him just 4 months prior and now he was running a competing tournament in terms of format and audience. It was one thing for the Steve Youngs of the world to run competing tournaments, but to compete against people who I do favors for? No thanks. Jim replaced me as Scholastic Director and has accomplished his main goal, which was to bring the Grades tournament to The Iowa City/Cedar Rapids area. The tournament drew 141 players last year due to repeated urging of the area chess players to support the tournament that had been wrenched from the Des Moines area. In the meantime there has been no IASCA scholastic events scheduled for this year in Des Moines and another rich vein of players has been lost. I also don't see the smaller groups I had cultivated continuing to play in the chess tournaments.

Des Moines Winter Classic Chess Tournament

  I helped Bill Broich direct a chess tournament in Des Moines yesterday. The main part of my duties was running the 22 player beginner open while Bill took care of the 18 player open section and the 11 player reserve section (Class C and below). Bill has been organizing tournaments for the past 2 years, and was quite capable of directing the tournament, but he asked for a more experienced director to assist and one of the perks of being a senior tournament director (only 4 in Iowa) is being able to help with a lot of the premier events in the state.

  The beginner tournament went well. Most of the beginners tend to be young kids and they are enthusiastic no matter what so it is always fun. Since I served as Iowa's Chess Scholastic Director from 2006 to 2008, it was a nice chance to meet up with some old friends like Sam Cole's dad Lee Cole (magician and comedian), and Winterset's Stephens and Konevitch families who I've seen growing up in chess tournament's I've run over the years.

  There was a couple of incidents in the non-beginner section. Long time curmudgeon Wes Ferguson (1996 Iowa chess champion) was playing Brent Walker (Norwalk High School girl's basketball coach). Walker was winning but only had 25 seconds left on his clock. He queened a pawn and while reaching to hit his clock, knocked over a piece. While Brent was putting the piece back, Ferguson banged his clock down and told Walker to 'put the piece back on his own time'. Then Wes accused Brent of making 2 moves. I was called in and since Wes had no claim, there was nothing to do. But Brent was clearly rattled by the ill will and the game eventually became a draw. Quite a shame since Wes is known for his 'odd tactics' and Brent is nothing if not a gentleman.

  The other incident occurred in the under 1600 section. There was a 9 year old girl named Anastasia who had 2 points out of 3 games (a loss, a win, and a point for being the player in an odd numbered field who did not have an opponent). Her father came up to Bill and said that Anastasia was tired, did not want to play any more, and would like a half point for not playing in the last round. Since in the last round most players are playing for prize money, half-point byes are not normally allowed unless requested in advance so the request was disallowed. So the father then said she would play because 'maybe her opponent would agree to a draw'. As it worked out, her opponent was Jaleb Jay, the high schooler that came with me, who also had 2 points. Jaleb was asked by the dad to agree to a draw and he said no. I tried to explain to the dad that if his daughter got the draw, she would win maybe five dollars, so if her tiredness was an issue, he should just withdraw from the tournament and take her home. I guess the five dollars was important because little Anastasia played. After an hour (which included her being late from dinner and the dramatic application of a makeshift ice-pack to help with her headache), her father came over to her table and told her to resign (a clear rules violation) since she was down a piece and rook. What a clown! The worst part about all this was that since there was an odd number of players, somebody had to not play in the last round who could have played if Anastasia had went home early.