English

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RA Fall Open 2009

September is an interesting month, when the kids go back to school, traffic patterns change across the city, and many people restart their favourite activities that slowed down during our somewhat short Canadian summers. Weekend tournament chess is no exception, and on the last weekend of September, the Eastern Ontario Chess Association (EOCA) started our annual Grand Prix with the RA Fall Open, 5 rounds between Friday and Sunday.

By the time we started on Friday evening, 50 players had signed up. Therefore, it was decided to make 1800 the sectional dividing line, with Section A (FIDE & CFC) for 1800 and up, and Section B (CFC) for U1800. Both of these sections were further subdivided into prize classes of 200 rating points each.

Section A was headed by 3 FIDE title players: GM Bator Sambuev, IM Tom O'Donnell, and FM Robert Hamilton. Unfortunately, Tom had to drop out early due to allergies affecting his breathing, but Bator and Robert battled very hard to the end, and were very engaging in the skittles room between rounds.

When it came to results, Bator was absolutely dominating! Not only did he win all of his games, but the way he did was just scary! Now, given my lower rating, I don't pretend to really understand what is happening on the top boards, LOL! However, as TD, I often circulate among all boards in play, and while doing that this weekend, I was shocked at how often I would pass by board 1, even only an hour or two into the round, only to find that Bator's opponent was not just on the defensive, but was trying to defend a massively disrupted King position. Is Bator getting even better?! His clear victory captured $400.

The next closest players, with scores of 4-1, were Dave Gordon and Wayne Barclay, who both had wonderfully solid performances, suffering only 1 loss within their 10 games total. However, Wayne was playing as an Amateur, so Dave won $300 outright for 2nd place, making this event the right choice! ;)

After these top players, the next score plateau was 3-2, and a whopping 10 players across the Top & U2200 classes finished tied, for the $200 3rd place prize, and for half of them, also tied for the $200 U2200 class prize. However, 4 of these 10 players were playing as Amateur, so when the dust settled from my calculator, 6 players shared $400: FM Hamilton, Kevin Pacey, Joey Qin, Bill Doubleday, David Dunn, and Helmut Fritzsche (who brought great cookies!)

The winner of the $200 U2000 class prize was much easier to figure out, as Josh Renaud blasted through Sunday's rounds to finish with a score of 2.5-2.5

Moving on to Section B, the $200 section (U1800) winner was also easy to figure out, as Mario Thibault won his last 4 games to finish with a score of 4-1. Then the $100 U1600 class prize was won by the continuously improving Kevin Wan, who scored 3-2 against mostly higher, and much older(!) competition.

Rounding out the class prizes was the $100 U1400 class prize, won by Jeff Zhang. Incidentally, Jeff was the only non-Amateur in the U1400 class, and so was pretty well guaranteed to win his prize right from the beginning! As an aside, some players expressed surprise that this prize was so high, but even though there is an upward pull on Amateur entry fees towards the higher classes, I strongly believe that when someone wins their class, it should be a sweet prize of 3 figures! In addition, prize classes are only 200 rating points wide, with the deliberate intent of everyone having a decent chance to win!

Thanks to the players and spectators for a memorable weekend. A lot of us seemed to be having a really good time, and I look forward to the next one.

Finally, I would like to thank Wei Xiong for making himself available all weekend as a floater player for Section B. This selfless commitment enabled me to easily ensure that we could never have a forced bye all weekend, no matter when anyone dropped out, or suddenly had something else to attend to. In addition, knowing that Wei would always be available made it easier for me as TD to rate the sections separately, do the pairings faster, etc. Thanks Wei!

Please visit the weblink below for a PDF of the wall chart. It should be up a day or so after the event, and will eventually also link to the CFC crosstables.

Yours in chess,

Aris Marghetis
Organizer/TD, EOCA President
http://www.eoca.org/htm/tournaments_2009-2010.html

My next event is the National Capital Open, scheduled for December 4th-6th. Stay tuned for event details, which include early registration discounts!

If you would like to receive the details on this event directly via email, please email arismarghetis@rogers.com to be added to my private email list.

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