3rd George Washington Open

Feb 7-8, 2004 - Springfield Virginia

5SS - G/120 (rds 1-3) 30/90 SD/1 (rds 4-5)
 

Click here for final results

18 Games from the tournament

Ever have one of those days in which nothing worked, everything was bad, and it seemed like the Universe was conspiring against you? The day before the 3^rd George Washington Open was one of those days.

  It actually started the night before when the weekly weather mess descended upon Northern Virginia. Cold freezing rain that turned into a day long deluge of just cold rain, melting the previous clumps of frozen snow and turning it into frigid torrents running down the streets. The cold rain seemed to be giving me a 24 hour case of Alzheimers in which I forgot things which are normally routine and basic.

 Having sloshed my way to the tournament site Friday afternoon, I checked into the new VCF hotel site: The Springfield Holiday Inn Express. The hotel registration was easy enough, perhaps too easy on the this bad day, something ominous was surely looming over the chess horizon. When I got to the room, I discovered that I had forgotten both my printer cable AND my power strip. Fortunately there was a Radio Shack across the street so I bought a nice printer cable, which would keep the three I have at home company, along with a pair of cheap power strips.

 We had an Arlington Chess Club blitz tournament scheduled for Friday night so I headed over to the club, stopping several places for food. I picked up Hot Pockets for warming up in the Microwave at the Lyon Village Community House kitchen. Well, being that the Universe was conspiratorial this day, the microwave turned out to be a big paperweight whose only working button was the “Clear” button. This necessitated another schlep through the driving rain in order to get some HOT food. The tournament went fairly smoothly so I was ready for the GWO the next morning.

 I started setting up the tournament around 715AM and discovered to my horror that the printer cable did not fit! Who would ever has thought that some design genius would have made a printer cable with a head so thick it didn’t fit into the back of a laptop? Someone at Compaq was surely emitting an unearthly howl of laughter at this one, good thing no one was in the room to hear my Nixonesque expletive deleteds. At this point, I didn’t trust the Universe enough to waste more money buying another cable, so I had to drive home and back to get a cable I KNEW would work. Surely a cop would get me for speeding,, a truck would flatten me or an iceberg would float in front of my car adding to the mounting frustration. Luckily all went well and I was back in 40 minutes, and all was well and forgiven in the Universe as registration began.

 We had 43 advance entries and the usual formula for local events is to double that with at-site entries. We wound up with 82 so the formula was fairly predictive this time.  Some local tournaments tend to be top-heavy with lots of masters compared to the distribution in the normal chess population. Tournaments in the “good ole days” of the 70’s and 80’s, before the influx of Russian Masters and roving bands of hungry Grandmasters, tournaments had nice normal distributions with just a little more masters than expected. The George Washington Open was a lot like that except for one exception.

 Estonian Grandmaster Jaan Ehlvest, several time participant in the FIDE World Championship tournaments, sporting a FIDE rating of 2599 and a USCF of 2665, entered the tournament several minutes after Round 1 started. Fortunately, Kebadu Belachew also showed up at the same time to play him or Ehlvest would have had to play little Arman Khojandi who had a full point bye in Round 1.

 Round 1’s upsets saw Andryei Ganbat (1645) defeat FM Boris Reichstein (2219) and Glen Flodstrom (1669) drew with FM Boris Privman (2292) – these were the major surprizes in Rd 1. Rd 3 saw little Yang Dai (1277) defeat Patrick Ray (1692). Ganbat eventually won the upset prize with his win over Reichstein, and first round upsets are usually winners of these prizes.

 The last round started with Ehlvest in clear first with 4-0, ahead of six players with 3 ½  points: IM Larry Kaufman, FM’s Ilye Figler, Boris Privman and Boris Zisman and then experts William Morriss and Andrew Johnson. Ehlvest was paired with Larry Kaufman as the natural pairing. They had only played once before with Larry taking the full point. This game was a long drawn out affair, one of the last 4 games to finish. Ehlvest took advantage of his White pieces, seemed to have a positional and spatial advantage every time I monitored the game and finally did what Grandmasters do, squeeze out the point. The position looked really tough to play for Larry and Ehlvest took the first place money. Fitting, the two highest rated players battling it out in the last round on board one for all the chess marbles.
 
Boris Privman and Ilye Figler were also winning quickly in the final round to finish with 4 ½ points.

Privman defeated William Morriss while Figler was producing a nice win against FM Boris Zisman.

As it often happens, three of the final 4 games to finish affected the top 3 places, Top Expert, and Top Class B.  Rarely do all the games affecting money finish quickly, much to the dismay of players hanging around wanting a piece of that money and directors wanting a little peace of mind after a long weekend.

 Andrew Johnson and Ray Kaufman played an exciting game that was one of the final 4 games. Ray Kaufman pulled out a tough win

 Glen Flodstrom and Joey Regalbuto played down to a Rook (Regalbuto) versus Bishop ending and they fairly quickly discovered that noone was taking home the full point.

 Jaan Ehlvest was clear first at 5-0 for $550 (minus his $45 GM free entry)

Boris Privman and Ilye Figler finished with 4.5 to take 2^nd and 3^rd for $275 each

Jeremy Hummer and Chris Sevilla were Top Experts at 4-1 for $80 each.

Robert Brady at 4-1 was clear first in Class A for $160.

Five tied in Class B with 3.0 to share $32, Youri Loboda, Daniel Clancy, Sanda Costescu, Raghu Rajaram and Edward Lu.

In Class C, Adithya Sundar took clear first with 3.5 and $160. This was an exceptionally good result as he also finished higher than the Class B winners.

With 2.5 points, Jeffrey Matthews and Joey Regalbuto shared $80 to win the Class D prize

Class D’s winner was Chris Fitzgerald also with 2.5 point for $160

Top Unrated with 1.5 was Peter Farzan for $100

Andryei Ganbat took top upset for $50.

 Tournament was organized and run by Michael Atkins and is covered on the VCF webpage at http://www.vachess.org/gwo2004.htm. Many thanks to former VCF President Catherine Clark for finding and securing this new site, bringing lots of goodies and being there Saturday morning. Thanks also to former State Champ Steve Greanias who had to withdraw but donated his EF to the tournament, it provided all the fruit for the tournament!