Big Money Blitz

Left: Dan Vasto and the Big Money Blitz Scoreboard.
Picture courtesy of Cub Noble - Professional Photographer.
Right: Cub and Tim played in the tournament as well as ran it.

  I played in the Big Money Blitz tournament at the Dahl’s supermarket in Ankeny yesterday. Dahl’s has a meeting room that they make available for chess tournaments and at least one tournament a month is held there. Most of the tournaments have been 4 games at 75 minutes per player per game. A 12 or 13 hour day of playing chess was a lot more fun when I was in my 20’s but now that I’m in my 50’s chess stops being fun and starts being work after 6 or 7 hours so I’ve passed on these longish tournament. I am planning on playing in the Ames Chess Festival weekend tournament in late October which may mean a 17 or 18 hour chess day on Saturday, but I can sleep over in Ames and take a round off if I am tired going into the night session.

  Big Money Blitz is the brainchild of Cub Noble and Tim Harder. In this tournament, you play 2 games with every other player (1 as White and 1 as Black) with 5 minutes per side (with a one second delay before your clock runs down). The quick time limit means you can play 3 opponents in an hour and since the tournament advertised 16 players, there would be 5 hours of chess play. 5 hours of chess is a good amount for me and I signed up myself and Jaleb Jay from our club in Marshalltown in June via Paypal.

  The only prize in the tournament was for first place (90% of the entry fees) and predictably it attracted a lot of the area’s top players. Dan Vasto (who won the top prize at both of my outdoor quick chess tournaments this summer) was there, along with fellow expert Joe Knapp from Nebraska. There were 3 class A players (Eric Vander Linden, Mark Kende, and Eddie Davinovic), 5 B players (Mathew Jacob, Eddie Divanovic, Jaleb Jay, Tim Harder, and myself), D player Cub Noble, and 2 beginners Josh and Jonny. I’ve beaten Dan once out of 4 games and drawn with Mark and Eric in the only games we had played in tournaments so I figured I could have a real good tournament with a little luck. First place would probably be out of my reach, but stranger things have happened. My main goal was to play good and stay away from the time trouble that plagued me at the Iowa State Fair speed chess tournament.

  I got up at 4:30 on Saturday as usual, and Kathy and I took Daisy and Baxter to the Jiffy for a beef stick treat. We got back around 6 and I took a nap, watched TV, and relaxed till 9:30. I picked up Jaleb a little before 10 and made the 50 mile trip to Ankeny. We had to go through about 5 miles of blinding rain but arrived at the Dahl’s 15 minutes before the 11am start time. I was pleasantly surprised when Cub gave me a snack bag of Crunchy Cheetos. As I found out later, Cub’s mom is a big crunchy Cheeto fan and buys them in volume, but she disagrees with my opinion that Puffy Cheetos are superior to the crunchy kind.

  Cub and Tim went over the ground rules before the tournament. Since it wasn’t rated, USCF rules didn’t have to be followed. For example, there was no touch move rule. Your move wasn’t complete until you hit your clock. The other major difference between Big Money Blitz and a rated tournament was that instead of posting pairings, the players were expected to find someone they hadn’t played, play their match, and mark it down on the scorecard each player was provided. Cub and Tim would then mark down the results on the Big Money Blitz scoreboard. I thought this kind of shotgun start would lead to everyone having to wait to play one slow player, but it worked out great and when Joe Knapp and his friend Johnny were delayed by the weather, they didn’t forfeit any games and caught up to the rest of the crowd in short order. Another benefit was that we could take a lunch or snack break whenever we wanted without making anyone wait.

Finding a different opponent each round is almost the chessic version of speed dating. But it helped the tournament handle a couple of late arrivals and I got all my games done in 4 and a half hours including a lunch break.

  I started off losing 2 quick games against Mark, but rebounded by drawing twice with Mathew Jacobs and then beating first time tournament player Josh twice to even my score at 3-3. I then played Tim Harder. I had a good game as Black, but I butchered the ending and found myself 3 pawns down when Tim ran out of time. Tim then crushed me when he had Black and I decided to take a break for lunch with a 4-4 score. Since the tournament was held in a supermarket, I could have anything I wanted. I wanted to get some Cheetos, but knew I needed a sensible lunch and settled for a cup of Yogurt and a can of Coconut Water (with Pulp). I had a nice conversation with the Dahl’s Checkout Lady.

Checkout Lady: Coconut Water?
Me : No. Coconut Water with PULP, m'am.
Checkout Lady: I didn’t know coconuts had pulp.
Me: I suppose anything can be beaten to a pulp, m’am.
Checkout Lady: Even us, I guess.
Me: I certainly have been.
  Checkout Lady declined to mention if she had ever been beaten to a pulp or maybe her supervisor was watching, but I got my change in record time, ate my yogurt, drank my coconut water (with pulp), took a walk, and got ready for the rest of the tournament.

  While I was drinking my coconut water with pulp, I decided that I was having a lot of trouble with the White pieces and would play the Boris (1.d4 2.f4) as White for the rest of the tournament against all the top rated players. I started the second half of the tournament against Cub and played my best two games of the day. I won a pawn or 2, smoothly traded down, and nailed the 2 points to go to 6-4. Next up was Dan Vasto. I had Black, he followed the same game we played last April, and I got a piece trapped and went down in flames. As White, I got a good position with the Boris and had a pretty even game. We each had about a minute left when I made my first horrible mistake of the day and hung a rook to a backward moving bishop to go to 6-6. Next up was the other expert Joe Knapp. Joe beat me pretty convincingly in both games and smashed the Boris convincingly to put me at 6-8. Next up was Eric. As White, I played the Boris for the 3rd time in a row. We got into a wild position when I found a perpetual check with my rook and knight, but we both went momentarily crazy and thought it was a checkmate. Eric resigned and afterwards we realized it wasn’t a checkmate. Eric beat me easily with the White pieces but the first game, combined with Tim’s running out of time earlier, gave me a point and a half I didn’t deserve.

  Next up was Eddie, who plays a wild and crazy style that gives me fits and has beaten me in both tournament games we have played. Today I caught Eddie in a tactic as Black in the first game to win a piece and crushed him in the second game with the Boris to get my record back to 9-9. Next up was Jaleb. Jaleb and I play 5 minute games almost every week at club and are pretty even. I started as White with the Boris, but Jaleb came up with some great ideas and beat me badly. As Black, I was up a pawn in a rook endgame, but I got over aggressive in trying to push for the win and managed to lose the game to drop my record to go to 9-11 with only 2 games left against Johnny B to try to even my score. Johnny B was not used to 5 minutes chess and got very low on time in both games so I did manage to get 2 wins and salvage an even score, which tied for 7th and 8th with Jaleb. I didn’t have the tournament I wanted, but did have the tournament someone of my ability could expect in this crowd.

  With my tournament over at around 3:30, I watched the rest of the games finish up, but first I got another yogurt and coconut water (with pulp). I also bought a big bag of Cheetos Puffs to share with the other chess players and had another great exchange at the checkout counter, this time with the Checkout Dude.

Checkout Dude: Will plastic be all right today, sir?
Me: Sure
Checkout Dude: That will be 6.82, sir.
Me (taking out some cash): Will paper be all right today, sir?

An informal show of hands showed a landslide in favor of Cheetos Puffs.
No one tried to take a swig of my coconut water WITH PULP.

  I put out the Puffs with the Crunchy Cheetos that Cub had given me and invited the other players to have a snack, but everyone who wanted a snack stuck their hand in the Puffs bag. No offense to Cub’s mom, but in my opinion comparing crunchy Cheetos to Cheetos Puffs is like comparing beef jerky and prime rib. But don’t take my word for it, just please consider that I took home the entire bag of crunchy Cheetos, but only a quarter bag of the Puffs.

  I watched Dan and Knapp battle it out in the finals (Dan winning to take the $90 cash prize) and hung around chatting with the other players till 5 and then went home. Cub and Tim even got some videos of the players in action. Here is a montage where you can see me going down in flames to Dan followed by a couple of other games. All the videos are on Cub’s chess.com page. I wish they’d gotten a video of me winning a game, but I turned that into a 50/50 proposition by winning half my games. I’ve never seen myself play before and think I’d go nuts if I had to play somebody chomping their gum as much as I do!

=>

I've never seen myself play before. Pretty fidgety!

  Big Money Blitz was a lot of fun and a great tournament, mainly because of Cub and Tim’s innovative thinking. I got to play 22 games (some against the best players in the area) in 4 and a half hours for just $10. I’m sure some players stayed away because they don’t think 5 minutes a side is 'real' chess, but they missed out. 5 minutes is a lot of time for a game and the chess was as much fun and just as cutthroat as any I’ve ever played. In an age where innovation seems measured by how many people a government can get to believe it’s cutting their deficit at the same time it is borrowing $5,000 per year for every man, woman, and child in the country, it’s nice to see some really creative thinking and I'm looking forward to their next tournament.

Upset Johnny

  Zach, a 4th grader at our club has managed to pull off some big wins in our last few Thursday night blitz tournaments. Last month, he beat Matt Kriegel (the same Matt Kriegel I barely got a draw against at last December’s CyChess) and last week Zach beat Roger (70+ year old legendary Ames chess coach). Both Matt and Roger are rated 3 classes over Zach and according to statistics should beat him 95% percent of the time but no one told Zach. Don’t ask me why, but I’ve always called a player that pulls off wins against higher rated competition Upset Johnny and now Zach is our club’s newest Upset Johnny. High School senior Jaleb Jay is also an Upset Johnny when he plays out of town, but I can’t really call him that at our club now that he is the highest rated blitz player in town with Matt moving to Ames and Jaleb passing by me in rating last month.

  Zach had some help from his opponents in pulling off his upsets, but he also has a lot of chess talent. He reminds me a lot of my son Ben in that they both love to attack and have an innate sense of where to put the pieces for the attack. Zach had winning positions against good players before, but he wouldn’t pull back from the attack and end up losing when he would sacrifice pieces for a checkmate attack that didn’t quite work. A player that gets a lot of winning positions is a lot like a baseball team with a poor closer that throws away games in the 9th inning. As soon as the team gets a new closer and the chess player learns to finish the game it seems as though a massive and sudden improvement has taken place, but in reality a small problem with big consequences has been corrected. Since Zach plays baseball, football, basketball, and the piano maybe he won’t ever become a state chess champion, but he enjoys playing chess and that’s the most important thing.

  I’ve always felt that a player shows their real improvement by being able to beat players at their own level as opposed to being an Upset Johnny for a tournament or 2. I’ve seen a lot of players (including my own sons) who have some great tournament results and skip a rating class or 2 because of their superior results against higher rated competition have a lot of trouble beating the players that are at the rating class that they skipped because they never learned how to beat them as equals in the heat of battle. I see a lot of adult players want to play in the open section of a tournament with a section geared for their current level and even pull off some upsets but the rating points gained generally proves to be temporary.

  At any tournament, you can’t tell who the Upset Johnny is going to be beforehand, but during the tournament you can tell by finding the player with the biggest grin on their face. I played in a tournament in 2004 in Iowa City. I lost my first round game to an expert and then got to play Jacob Uptain from Cedar Rapids, who I outrated by 2 classes. Little did I know I was really facing 'Upset Johnny'.

  I played about as bad as I could in that game, but Jacob beat a player in the next round that was a rating class above me which made me feel less awful. Jacob even beat my son Ben in the High School Championship in October 2005 so it can safely be said Jacob was a player. I won my next game when the player at the next table disrupted everyone around him with his ‘Psycho’ act and I got less distracted than my opponent.

  Normally my best tournaments involve getting draws against higher rated players and taking care of business against the lower rated players who want to be Upset Johnny against me, but I had one tournament when I was Upset Johnny. In 1984, I was rated 1350 and played in the New Jersey Open but in the Open section (the reserve was for players rated under 1800). I was the only player rated under 1600 in the open section, but I beat 2 players that outrated me by 2 classes and drew another to go with 2 losses to masters and I went into the last round with a chance to win the $300 under 2000 prize. Here are my ‘Upset Johnny’ games:

  As you can tell, normally an upset occurs when the higher rated player has a bad day or makes a big mistake (although I did play OK in the second game) and the lower rated player doesn’t make the usual mistakes that a player of their rating normally does, but once Upset Johnny gets a taste of blood, the increased confidence can unlock even greater accomplishments. In the last round of that New Jersey Open, the clock struck midnight and my glass slippers turned back into a pair of old shoes as I played poorly and lost to an expert. I had a lot of trouble for a couple of months when I went back to playing at my own level in quads, but it was fun to be an Upset Johnny for once.

  These 3 games reinforce the 2 things I used to tell my kids (and still tell myself) before every tournament and I think they are as close to a universal truth you can get to in chess. Rule #1: You can beat anyone and Rule #2: Anyone can beat you. As happy as I am that Zach has been beating some highly rated players, I’ll be happier when he consistently beats the people in our tournaments that are currently equal to his playing level.

A Hostage Situation

  Of all the snack foods to munch on while on the job, Cheetos are my favorite and puffy Cheetos are my preferred choice. They may well be the perfect food. I love the cheesy taste, the artificial orange color you have to scrub off your hands, and the way they just melt in my mouth. Despite the knock offs that are around, Cheetos brand Cheetos are hands down the only brand for me. I can’t afford to eat them morning, noon, and night (if I could, I’d consider being bulimic!), but they are a great mid-morning snack to get me feeling good about life if I’ve been having a rough morning at work.

  When I first started working in Des Moines in 1994, our office had this snack tray that worked on the honor system. You would put your money into a slot in the tray and take a snack out of the tray. The tray had 2 bags of puffy Cheetos a week. I would buy them and the snack lady would stop by and refill the tray. There were only 4 of us working there so most of the stuff in this tray would just stay there. After a while, snack lady stopped bringing in puffy Cheetos, bringing in the crunchy kind instead. crunchy Cheetos are OK, but I like puffy Cheetos. I asked snack lady to bring back the Puffy Cheetos, but she said that she couldn’t get them from her supplier anymore. In protest (and because there were plenty of convenience stores in walking distance), I never bought any of the crunchy Cheetos and soon thereafter the owner told snack lady that since no one was buying anything from her tray she could just take her tray and not come back. She promised to get the puffy Cheetos back, but the owners mind was made up and I never saw snack lady again. A few years later a guy joined our company as a support person and he also had a small vending machine business. He managed to get his vending machine put in the building but never had Cheetos.

  Occasionally, I’d buy a bag of puffy Cheetos on my way home from work but all that orange stuff got stuck on my fingers and all over the inside of the car so I just would settle for walking to the convenience store at lunch and getting a bag to eat at my desk but no bag of Cheetos survived the walk back to the office. For that same reason, it’s futile for me to pack some Cheetos in my car for the trip to work. They probably won’t even make it out of town. I’ve looked in the vending machines in all the jobs I’ve been in and I’ve never seen puffy Cheetos in any of them. Maybe they take too much room or maybe they get damaged in the machine, but potato chips are just as fragile. It may be the sad truth that time has passed me by and that crunchy Cheetos are just more popular and that puffy Cheetos have been relegated to the dustbin of history as dinosaur food for fossils like me.

  On the 8th floor of the downtown building where I work, there are 2 vending machines for the 30+ employees. One has cans of soda and the other has snacks. I’ve bought one can of Pepsi in the 5 months I’ve been working there, but the other machine is always well stocked with crunchy Cheetos. I had a bag on a particularly stressful day and while it wasn’t puffy Cheetos, they were a satisfying snack and I’ve put a modern twist on my old addiction and have been having 2 or 3 bags out of the vending machine a week.

  3 weeks ago, I bought a bag of crunchy Cheetos but as the wire wheel spun the bag towards me, I noticed that the Cheetos in the rack had been replaced by JALEPENO crunchy Cheetos. Upon further inspection, I noticed that every other slot in vending machine corridor B3 had been assigned to Jalepeno crunchy Cheetos. I had a bag of the Jalepeno crunchy Cheetos the next day and I didn’t care for them. The pepper taste interfered with the signature cheesy Cheeto taste too much for my liking. 2 days later, the regular crunchy Cheetos were first in line and all was well, but for the next week, the only way I could get some non-Jalepeno crunchy Cheetos was to buy 2 bags. One afternoon, I saw the vending machine guy and asked him why the Jalepeno Cheetos were mixed in with the regular brand. He told me that they had a lot of them and had to get rid of them so he was mixing them in.

Before and after the purchase of a bag of crunchy Cheetos.
Notice how fans of the potato chips on the top row don't have to wait for their favorite variety to be at the front of the line.

  In the 2 weeks since that conversation, I’ve only bought 2 bags of Cheetos, both of the regular variety. I’m lucky that there is either a Jalepeno Cheetos lover in the office or someone who has less patience than me. I had to wait all day Thursday and half of Friday before the regular Cheetos got to the front of the line in corridor B3. While I was staring at that bag of Jalepeno Cheetos, I noticed that while the Almond Joy and Mounds alternated in one row of the vending machine and that peanut butter M&Ms were buried behind the peanut M&Ms, Sour Cream and Onion Lays and plain Lays potato chips each had their vending machine spot.

  On the 50+ mile drive home from work, the more I thought about how my regular Cheetos were being held hostage with a ransom price of the 85 cents it would cost to buy a bag of Jalepeno Cheetos, the madder I got. People who don’t like regular or Sour Cream and Onion potato chips don’t have to take this kind of garbage, why should I? Just because some vending machine company overbought or got a great deal on Jalepeno Cheetos is no reason I should be deprived of my chosen mid-day snack. I’ve decided to boycott this vending machine until they have corrected this injustice and I've also alerted the Obama, Bachmann, Paul, and Perry campaigns about this issue so they can be prepared to tackle it when they head back to Iowa for the caucuses. I didn’t tell the Romney campaign because given his religious views I doubt he would see any problem with the co-mingling of multiple kinds of snacks in the same vending machine corridor.

Ladies Day

  I held my last outdoor tournament of the summer on Saturday at Pioneer Park in Des Moines. I had a feeling the tournament would be poorly attended and I wasn’t disappointed with the crowd of 10 players and 2 parents. The winners of the tournament were Chandler, the high school sophomore from my club in Marshalltown that I’ve been bringing to the tournaments in return for helping me set up, and teenager MaryAnn Czizek from Ankeny. MaryAnn had Chandler beat in their last round game, but stalemated him to give them each 2 wins and a draw. The other girl in the tournament, 5th grader Ana Denison also won her first 2 games and had a chance to win the tournament but lost to MaryAnn’s brother in the last round.

  This was the first time a girl had won one of my youth tournaments, a fact which escaped me at the time. Ana’s mom, Christine (who is a doctor and a professor at Iowa State University) has been playing in adult rated chess tournaments for the last 9 months and has finished in the top 3 of all her parent and friends tournaments (which are friendlier affairs), even winning this month’s tournament, where she swept 2 games from Raj Vyas (the mother of 3 time Iowa Girls champion Dhrooti Vyas). I got to play Christine in the May tournament. She played a good game and got a very good position, but overlooked a trick while pursuing her own plans, which is a common ailment among players until they get some experience (and sometimes even after).

  Because I didn’t have an afternoon cash tournament scheduled this month, I was able to hang out with any of the players and parents who wanted to after the tournament. Ana had challenged me to a game during the tournament and had first dibs while Christine sat down to play against Chandler (who she had beat 2 out of 3 games before the tournament). As Ana and I sat down to play, she asked ‘Why do boys say girls suck at chess?’ I just said the first thing that popped into my head, which was “If they can get you to quit playing, then they’ll never have to lose to you”. I hope the person who told her this wasn’t a regular at my tournaments, but if it was it wouldn’t surprise me. This stuff really ticks me off because I'd hate to have the people I work so hard to get to come to my tournament drive other people away.

  I know whoever said that hasn’t played Bethany, Charity, and Sarah Faith Carson of Ackley who (along with dad Tim and brother Daniel) are excellent chess players and ferocious fighters over the board. As much as I try to drill it into the kids’ heads that when you sit down at the chess board everyone gets the same number of pieces and that age, money, size, looks, etc…don’t matter, it isn’t really believed until they both win and lose a game that their preconceived stereotypes had predicted the opposite result for.

  If these young chess players are watching the political news, it would be easy to see why they might think girls can’t possibly play chess. Sarah Palin was made a laughing stock in the media for her folksy way of talking and saying she had some foreign affair experience because she could see Russia from her house. It didn’t help that the Saturday Night caricature of her by Tina Fey was so devastatingly lifelike, but to me the real issue was how so many people, men and women alike were willing to believe that she was some sort of a disingenuous moron. Now I’m not saying that Sarah Palin would make a good President or Vice-President or even that she is qualified. I’m just saying that do you think someone with no brains could go be the governor of a state? I don’t think it is just a republican thing since Hillary Clinton was consistently portrayed as a shrill poor loser when she squared off against Obama in the Democratic primary and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was caricatured as a hag while her replacement’s (John Boehner) crying jags are rarely mentioned anymore.

  This year the media’s new target seems to be Michelle Bachmann, the congresswoman from Minnesota who won the Iowa Straw Poll a couple of weeks ago. Bachmann needs to hire a fact checker and has provided ample fodder for the news media by wishing Elvis a happy birthday on the anniversary of his death and saying John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa on a recent visit there (She was close, serial killer John Wayne Gacy lived in Waterloo). I guess if she was elected it would be good if she knew all that stuff so she could impress all the other countries by winning the United Nations Trivial Pursuit championship.

  Saturday Night Live hasn’t had their say yet, but I don’t think the media putdowns aren’t sticking to Bachmann like they did Palin because after 4 years, the jokes aren’t as novel. I think she has an excellent chance to be the Republican nominee. Winning the straw poll proves she has the backing of the GOP fanatics (you had to pay $30 for a vote) a winning nominee needs for all the door knocking and phone calling work in the type of local campaigns needed to win primaries and caucuses and except for one candidate she is running against a very flawed field. I can’t see Romney the semi-liberal Mormon getting the support needed in the Midwest and South even with his nice head of hair, Ron Paul is too marginal, Palin has been too damaged by the media, and most of the other candidates are too underfunded and not well known enough (except Newt Gingrich, who everyone knows and hates). That leaves Texas Governor Rick Perry as the new flavor of the month. Perry possibly has even better hair that Romney and has been talking the conservative talk on issues like gay marriage and economically is touting the ‘Texas Miracle’ of job growth (basically government jobs and jobs created by his state’s proximity to Mexico) as his plan to carry to the US as a whole. As Governor, Perry has a history of being for the TARP and the stimulus packages that the Tea Party hates and his 11 years as governor will show some decisions on the social front that may offend the Bible thumpers he is currently courting. Just as Obama kept successfully hitting his opponents in 2008 with the fact that he was the only candidate to not support the Iraq war, Bachmann has a strong record of voting against government spending and for tax cuts that she can use against Perry. And didn’t we just have a president that was a governor from Texas? How’d that work out?

  Even if Bachmann was to become the nominee, she can’t beat Obama in the general election. But Obama could beat himself if unemployment spikes, the stock market dips, inflation rages, and everyone who still has a job is scared to death of losing it. Bachmann’s speeches remind me a lot of Ronald Reagan in tone in that they are simple and make a lot of sense if you don’t try to reason out the details. 32 years ago, Reagan was seen as a trigger happy actor who would start World War III if elected but when unemployment and inflation both hit 18 percent, Iran took our embassy hostage, the Russians invaded Afghanistan, and everyone had to wait in line 2 hours to get a tank of gasoline all of a sudden Reagan’s ideas of cutting taxes on the rich so they could create jobs for the poor became a lot more palatable since nothing President Carter was doing had worked. Like I’ve said before, stranger things have happened.

  But I wasn’t thinking of any of that when I sat down to play Ana. And I didn’t think about my 2 game losing streak to Charity Carson at the Marshalltown Chess Club either. I just thought of my bittersweet experience at the State Fair Chess Tournament 3 days prior and how I’ve beaten higher rated players and lost to lower rated one sand if I was going to play I may as well play to win.

  I beat Ana pretty quickly in the first game when she got confused and set up a slick combination to checkmate me, but she forgot I had traded Queens a few moves back and gave me a rook in order to swoop her KING (who was standing where her Queen used to be) across the board and checkmate me. She wanted to play again and I was still hungry to play. This time I decided to play the ‘Boris’, the opening my friend and chess mentor Boris Rakita used to play against me in 5 minute chess every lunchtime for 2 years in the 1980’s when we worked together at an engineering firm. Ana went head to head with the ‘Boris’ and reminded me of some of the wild games we used to play during those lunchtimes 30 years ago:

  That was a fun game to be part of. The ‘High Five’ trash talk took me back to when I worked midnights and hung out in Washington Square Park during the day playing blitz. We played another game and I had an advantage, but we called it a draw in order to play some bughouse with some of the other kids.

  It was another fun day of outdoor chess and I hope Christine keeps playing tournament chess and Ana shuts some mouths and opens some eyes this upcoming scholastic season. Christine and Jodene Kruse in Okoboji are the only 2 adult women actively playing tournament chess in Iowa that come to mind. Having more women play tournament chess reinforces that it is a game for everyone and that when kids learn chess they are learning a game that they can play their whole lives.

A fair Iowa State Fair

This wasn't the only shot in the gut I'd be taking from David Skaar this day.
On the right is Ben Munson, legendary Des Moines chess teacher.

  This past week was Iowa State Fair Week in Des Moines and every year on the Wednesday of that week, the Iowa State Fair Speed Chess competition is held. Last year I finished second and have been pointing to this day for over a month to make another attempt at the coveted first place Blue Ribbon to along with my red (2nd), white(3rd) and 2 yellow (participant) State Fair speed chess ribbons.

  I left work an hour early, snaked my way through Des Moines, paid 5 dollars to park in some guys backyard (the state fair lots were full and this guy lives next to their parking lots), walked through the State Fair parking lot, paid my $10 dollar fair entry fee, and walked through the throngs of people drinking $5 sodas in commemorative cups ($3 refills) and eating anything that can be fried in grease and stuck on a stick (including fried butter on a stick) towards the Administration Building where the tournament is held every year. The scholastic tournaments were wrapping up and I was happy to see some of the tournament players from my scholastic events competing. I talked to some of the kids and parents while waiting for the 5:30 start time.

  The State Fair tournament is organized and run by Ben Munson every year. Ben is a concert violinist, an expert chess player, and one of the great people of Iowa chess, spending countless hours as a volunteer chess teacher in Des Moines schools over the last 3 decades. You could say that I’m an offshoot of the Ben Munson School of running tournaments in that we both want low entry fees, lots of prizes, and have no one in our tournaments walk away empty-handed. This is not to say that we agree on everything. For example, Ben doesn’t believe that kids should be playing in USCF rated tournaments until they are rated at least 1200 (ratings start at 100 and all but a few Iowa Scholastic players are rated below 1200) and I think rated tournaments are fine as long as a child’s ratings don’t become all-consuming, but the fact remains that I respect Ben’s opinions a lot and everyone I’ve ever met that knows Ben also has an enormous amount of respect for him.

  There were a lot of strong players at this year’s event like Mike Maloney. Mike outrates me by 2 rating classes, but said he just came to watch and wasn’t going to play. Another player 2 rating classes above me was George Eichhorn (who was there to play). George is an attorney and I registered as a Republican last year solely to vote for him when he ran for Secretary of State. To this date, George is the only member of a major party I have ever voted for. As a chess player, George has made the finals of the State championship 2 of the last 3 years and beat Matt in this year’s final, costing Matt the state chess championship. My longtime state fair nemesis David Skaar was on hand, along with Tim Harder (Tim is in the same rating class as I am), rising scholastic player Cub Noble (who should have beat me last year and is even a stronger player now), Marshalltown Blitz semi-regular Steve Jacobs (who has played me even this year in Marshalltown), and tournament veteran Greg Ward.

3 generations of Iowa tournament organizers: Ben Munson and myself (left).
Cub Noble and Tim Harder, representatives of the next generation (right).

  At the State Fair it is vitally important not to fall too far behind on the clock since you only have 5 minutes for the game and there is no delay before your clock runs down to allow you to make an unlimited amount of moves with just a second left on your clock. Cub offered to play me a warm up game at the time limit. He beat me easily, but I shrugged off my sloppy play and beat him in the next 3 games. Fully warmed up, I took on Mike, who crushed me. After my beatdown, I took the rest of the time to catch up with the rest of the players and Ben, and talk shop will fellow tournament organizers Cub Noble and Tim Harder about their September 3rd Big Money Blitz tournament in Ankeny. While Ben is from the previous generation of tournament organizers that does the pairings, press releases, and promotional mailings by hand, and I am of the current generation that uses a computer for the pairings and email and Internet for promotion, Cub and Tim are the next generation of organizers that accept payment by Paypal and promote via Facebook.

  Last year there were only 8 players in the speed chess tournament and we all played each other, but this year 19 players chose to compete. An all-play-all tournament would have taken at least 3 hours, so Ben divided us into 5 groups of 3 or 4 players who would play each other and the winner of each pool would compete in the finals. I was extremely lucky in that my group had 2 beginner kids and Casey Smith, the parent of a scholastic player who has played in my parent and friends tournament but had never played with a clock set to 5 minutes before. I had Black against each youngster and dispatched them in short order and then beat Casey with White to take a spot in the finals. Cub had the misfortune to be placed in George’s group and missed the finals, while Tim lost to Skaar, and Steve was upset by Greg. That’s 3 pretty strong players not even getting in the finals!

George Eichhorn

  The 5 players in the finals were George, David Skaar, Greg, myself, and a guy I never saw before named Robert who won the fifth pool. In the first game I had the black pieces against George, a daunting challenge. I thought George wanted to attack but instead he let me get my pawns on his side of the board and make him defend against me. I crashed open the center and had a monster passed pawn that put his pieces in a horrible cramp, but made a couple of bad moves to lose all my queen side pawns. I managed to come back from that to win George’s queenside pawns back and get a winning position, but then I noticed that I had 20 seconds left on the clock and George had a minute. I raced my pawns down the board and made a Queen with a forced checkmate in 5 moves, but with no delay on the clocks at the State Fair I ran out of time and lost.

  I was happy that I was able to go toe to toe with George, but if I had matched his speed maybe I’m not able to get the winning position I did. I had the second round off and David and George played to a draw, which barring a major upset sealed me off from first place for this year. I had the white pieces against Skaar in round 3. I got a great position and won a rook for a knight, but couldn’t figure out how to break through the chain of pawns protecting David’s king. I glanced at the clock and saw I only had 30 seconds to a minute and a half for David. I tried my best to break through but with 8 seconds on my clock, I moved a piece that was pinned to my king and David took my King. I’m not sure how the State Fair rules handle this, but it didn’t matter since I had no time left so I resigned.

  I was pretty bummed out as I took the black pieces against Greg. I thought I had a great chance to come home with the blue ribbon and instead I was looking at 2 straight losses in positions I could have won. I played listlessly against Greg, got too aggressive and missed a knight fork that cost me a rook for a knight. I looked at the clock and saw that Greg had 2 minutes while I had 3. Instead of attacking me with his material advantage, Greg decided to give me a piece in order to trade queens. I had a crummy position, but with equal material and a time advantage, I was able to slowly get back in the game and was a piece ahead when Greg’s time ran out. I couldn’t take a lot of joy in the victory since I had just lost 2 games in the same fashion, but a win is a win is a win. In the last round I had White against Robert, who had lost all his games. I played a smarter game this round, making safe, quick moves and built up a 2:30 to 2:00 edge on the clock. Robert finally made a mistake in time pressure, lost a piece and I brought home the point to finish 5-2 for the day, 2-2 for the finals, and the owner of my second 3rd place white ribbon from the Iowa State Fair. David and George finished in a tie for first and Ben rewarded them each with a first place blue ribbon.

On the left are the other players in my group and on the right Cub Noble battles George Eichhorn. Over the the chessboard chess players can be a cutthroat bunch, but away from the board we tend to get along great.

  Playing at the fair this year was an interesting dynamic. Except for Robert and the 2 kids I played in the preliminary round, I knew, liked, and respected everyone I played but when we sat down at the board the smiles disappeared and we went at each other like 2 dogs going after a scrap of meat, yet after the game we were as friendly as we were before the first move. We all wanted desperately wanted to win each game we sat down to play, but also understand the randomness of chess, especially the 5 minute variety, and there were no hard feelings about the results.

  I had a great time at the State Fair tournament as always, but I’m disappointed in myself for not playing as good as I thought I could have. It’s just like I tell the kids at the tournaments. My opponents just played better than me and if I can use this experience to get better, I won’t walk away from the tournament as a loser. If I am ever going to capture that blue ribbon, I have to be more aware of the clock and not get into the extreme time pressure I did on Wednesday. I’ve signed up for Tim and Cub’s 5 minute BIG MONEY BLITZ tournament in Ankeny on Labor Day weekend and in the two weeks till the tournament I am going to practice 3 and 5 minute chess on the internet and especially working on getting in the habit of looking at the clock every move to make sure I don’t fall behind on the clock.

  I bought an ice-cold pickle for the mile walk back to my car. It was a fitting reward for my 3rd place finish since as good as the cold pickle tasted on a hot night, it also left me with a sour taste when I was done. I have the white ribbon hanging up next to my monitor at work where I can see it all the time. My co-workers are impressed with my third place finish and maybe they think I have it hanging up to remind myself of my good result or to show off. I graciously accept their congratulations, but don't mention that the real reason my white ribbon is hanging by my computer screen is to remind me as often as possible how much I want that blue ribbon in 2012.