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by Alex Marler
[click here to download PGNs from the 2012 Club Championship]
The 2012 Club Championship was the biggest ever! This was mainly due to a format change that allowed anyone to play, not just those that qualified by winning Chess Club tournaments. So, some of you might be thinking that allowing just anyone to play would strip the prestige from the event and make the field of players much weaker. Well, you’d be wrong. The event attracted 31 fightin’ chess players competeing for a 1st-place prize of $400, a 2nd-place prize of $300, a 3rd-place prize of $200 and several nice U2100 prizes. GM Finegold, SM (senior master) Mark Heimann rated at 2400+, FM Doug Eckert 2200+, NM Victor Feldberg 2200+, and NM Richard Benjamin 2200+ illustrate quite clearly the strength of this event. 1st place overall went to GM Finegold who finished with 4.5/5. A tie for 2nd-4th was shared by SM Heimann, FM Doug Eckert, and Alex Marler (hey, that’s me!). The Top U2100 prize went to Matt Larson, who is rated only 1844.
MAJOR UPSETS
In the first round NM Richard Benjamin achieved a crushing position against Jonathan Schrantz, but had to settle for a draw due to some rust and crafty defensive play by Schrantz. Mr. Schrantz has been spending a lot of time at the club recently, and it is beginning to show up his play. Dan Aldrich (1852) was taken down by unrated Murthy Medisetti. Medisetti represents the classic tale of "Man wins Chess Club Unrated Beginner Tournament and gets free USCF membership, then goes on to crush experienced tournament players." I actually had to play Medisetti in round 2, and it was a little unsettling that an unrated player was playing at such a high level. In round 2 Life Master Jim Voelker gave a draw to Vishal Bharadwaj (1750). In Round 3 Medisetti was back at it; wreaking havoc on Jacob Zax (1750) and winning in style.
THE TOURNAMENT
GM Finegold seemed to clean up the first day with three easy victories, however in round 4 he was paired with SM Heimann, who is no fish. GM Finegold had requested a 5th-round bye before the tournament began, so he was in a must-win situation if he wanted to clinch the 1st-place money. SM Heimann, who had the white pieces, tried to force the game into quiet channels by essaying the Reti Opening. The Reti is a hypermodern opening where white avoids moving any pawns past the third rank and tries to use his pieces to control the center; it usually leads to calm positions where both sides piece delicately prance around the board until a draw is agreed. But Finegold was having none of that! He erected a large center and castled his king opposite of Heiman (castling ones king to the opposite side of the board is like that scene in the movie Braveheart where Mel Gibson is running onto the battlefield covered in war paint and screaming while waving a battle axe). Heimann was on the defensive the whole game. Finegold proved his GM status and overwhelmed Heimann with his tactical abilities, achieving a completely winning endgame; Heimann soon resigned.
In the last round Heimann was slightly worse agaisnt NM Benjamin, but Benjamin made a huge oversight and lost a piece for a few pawns. Benjamin told me that his pawns were no match for Heimann’s extra piece. NM Benjamin did have at least one brilliant game, unfortunately it was against the author of this article. It was my only loss of the event! My play was truly misguided during the game. NM Benjamin ground me down in a endgame in Karpovian-style.
FM Eckert faced off with SM Heimann in round 3. Heimann played in classic solid style agaisnt FM Eckert’s Catalan opening. Ecker’t pieces were caught off balance (caught on weird squares while trying to transfer to better squares) when Heimann launched a queenside assault. Eckert decided to jettison a pawn for complications (which just means he was going for broke against Heimann’s King), but Heimann sniffed out all hidden threats and won the game quite elegantly. FM Eckert found himself in a must-win situation in the last round against Life Master James McLaughlin. Eckert and McLaughlin have faced each other three times since the New Year, and each time Eckert was white. FM Eckert mentioned that he was going to have to come up with some new ideas in his Catalan opening because McLaughlin has faced it three times now and each time he is better prepared for it. Anyway, McLaughlin put a tough defense and managed to force the game into an equal rook ending. It seemed likely to the spectators that a draw was the obvious result. However, neither player was interested in a draw and the continued to play. Soon the rooks were exchanged and a complicated pawn ending arose on the board with both players were under 5 minutes, which makes finding critical moves next to impossible. FM Eckert calculated a little bit further and was able to win a pawn race which led to him getting an extra queen, so Mclaughlin resigned.
The first three rounds proved rather difficult for me. I felt like I hadn’t played chess in years, and my play demonstrated that. After a crushing defeat at the hands of NM Benjamin in round 3, I decided to play super aggressively in round 4 and 5 as I needed two wins to finish in the money. In round 4 I played Tom Morrell, rated 1700. Morrell played the French defense, which according to Wilhelm Steinitz "is the dullest of all openings." I played the Korchnoi Gambit of the Tarrasch variation against his French. After accepting the pawn, black was forced to defend the rest of the game. Most of the game black’s pieces were clustered on the back rank surrounding his king, which remained on e8 the whole game. On the other hand, my pieces were running around the whole board taking things, like pawns. He was soon forced to resign as I was promoting a pawn in the middlegame! In the fifth round I met Jim Voelker. He was having quite a rough tournament, so I new there was a good chance that I could win. I had the black pieces in this game. The last time I played Voelker in a touranment was the Saint Louis Open in 2006. In that game I was black as well. He played the King’s Gambit and I was able to uncork a novelty on move three that NM Lawton and I had been exploring, 1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Bc4 f5?! I finished that game with nice combination. Fast forward to 2012, Voelker joked before the game that there would be no King’s gambit in this game. He played 1. e4 and I responded with the Sicilian defense, 1..c5. Voelker is an expert in the Morra Gambit vs the Sicilian, but black can avoid the Morra and transpose into the c3 Sicilian by playing an early Nf6 on move three, so I wasn’t worried too much. He elected for an Open Sicilian, 2.Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 cxd4. Its been about a year since I played the Sicilian defense in a tournament, so I played an older line that is not too popular anymore (the Kalashnikov line. By playing something old I avoided Voelker’s preparation. Voelker went on a pawn-grabbing spree in the opening and gave me three extra moves. This proved to be his downfall as I developed a huge lead in development and forced his king to stay in the middle of the board. By move 14 he was dead lost! The game lasted another ten moves or so and with checkmate looming he called it a day.
I would like to thank everyone for playing in this years Club Championship, and hope that they make it out to the Threes are Wild tournament on March 3rd!.
