Eastern Ontario Chess Association

L'Association des échecs de l'est-Ontario

EOCA - AEEO

2009 EOO Report

Eastern Ontario Open

Due to the Ontario Open having been in Ottawa this year, the Eastern Ontario Open was in turn later in the month of June than it usually is. We were even later than both the end of the Stanley Cup playoffs, and the end of school for the summer! However, we were able to squeeze it in before Canada Day!  :)

Almost 50 players made it to the RA Centre in Ottawa, despite an incredible rainstorm during onsite registration! Few things in my chess life have been funnier than the sight of a topless player blow-drying his soaked shirt in the restroom! Aside from that, the RA Centre has recently dramatically improved their air conditioning system, which was much appreciated by everyone. We also switched to bigger better tables, which all the players seemed to prefer.

Back to the registrations, the players were divided into Section A for 1800 and up, and Section B for U1800. Both of these sections were further broken down into classes of 200 rating points each, but more details on that later. But before reporting the tournament results, I just wanted to take a moment to thank my two floater players, who thus ensured that we had no forced byes all weekend. Thanks again Wei Xiong and David Gordon, who also helped with the set-up and wrap-up of the playing room and of the skittles room. If anyone else is interested in being a floater player for us, please feel free to email me!

Getting to the tournament results, all of our regular FIDE title players were otherwise occupied this weekend, which opened the door wide open for some different people to win this event. In addition to drawing with each other in round 4, the top two rated players, Kevin Pacey and Armando Valdizon, finished tied at the top with scores of 4-1. This was worth $400 each, as they split the 1st and 2nd place prizes of $500 and $300. A special honourable mention goes to John Upper, who also finished with a score of 4-1, but who was playing as an Amateur. There was a 3rd place prize of $100, but more on that later.

Two players scored 3.5-1.5 to round out the top five players, but they both won much bigger class prizes instead. Mavros Whissell started his long drive home before knowing for sure that he had won the U2200 $300 class prize, so when you read this Mavros, congrats! Mavros had a great tournament, but really impressive was that Danail Donev also scored 3.5 -1.5 to win the U2000 $300 class prize. To put this in perspective, Danail was ranked 21st out of 24 players in section A, and still scored 3.5-1.5 against five opponents rated higher than him, most of them by hundreds of rating points! Well done Danail!

These two high performing class prize winners left a unique gap for other players to claim the 3rd place $100 prize, which rounded out the $900 in prizes for the top of Section A. Five non-Amateurs scored 3-2 each to share this for $20 each: Misters Doubleday, Humphreys, Sadeghi, Fritzsche, Desjardins.

Moving on to Section B, it consisted of an U1800 class, an U1600 class, and an U1400 class. In the U1800 class, Anton Georgiev and Jason Nguyen had the best scores of 4-1, but as Anton was playing as an Amateur, Jason took the U1800 $200 class prize alone. In the U1600 class, Jacob Krolczyk took the U1600 $200 class prize alone, again with a dominating score of 4-1. Finally, in the U1400 class, the top results were achieved by Liiban Farah with 3.5-1.5, and Matthew Scott and Kevin Wan, both with 3-2. However, only Kevin was playing as a non-Amateur, and so he took the U1400 $100 class prize alone.

In closing, I would like to take a moment to recognize all the positive spirit displayed this weekend. This was one of the most fun events I have run in years, with so many players having a great time, and the chess was so combative and exciting, as witnessed by incredibly few draws! Good summer everyone!

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%202008-09.html

My next event will be the RA Fall Open, to be scheduled for late September.

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