Hamilton Winter Open 2013-Report

Tournament Report by Garvin Nunes from Chesstalk
‘First of all I want to thank the players, parents and spectators that came to our tournament. My count for players this weekend was 83 (Bobby G please confirm this!). With parents and spectators we regularly had over 100 people in the building for things chess related.

The top finishers in the event were as follows:

Top Guns1st Victor Plotkin with 4.5 points
Tied 2nd Roman Sapozhnikov, Hans Jung, Mike Ivanov with 3.5 points

U20001st Rob Gashgarian with an amazing 5 points
2nd Mario Moran-Venegas with 4 points
Tied 3rd Richard Chen, Wenyang Ming, Mario Piccinin with 3.5 points

U16001st Gary Hua with 4.5 points
Tied 2nd Nameer Issani, Nicholas Vettese, Adrian Calugaru, Alex Shlega with 4 points

The U1600 section received trophy prizes. Due to a shortage of trophies one of the second place finishers received a wind up radio that was graciously donated to the Hamilton Junior Chess Club. We would like to thank PK Hummingbird once again for their donation of wind up radios several years ago.

This tournament was filled with drama and excitement. McMaster University student Adam Cormier told me that during this event he played his best ever game. There were at least a few local Hamiltonians who were playing their first chess tournament. And it was great to see this tournament had one of our largest turnouts of women.

The stories are too numerous to tell so I hope some of you will help me out with that. In the meantime take a look at some of the pictures from this event in this chess talk thread. (And please feel free to add more!)

I want to thank Walter De Jong for giving me the wooden board and pieces that were used on board 1. (You can also check this Chess Talk thread for examples of his fine photography!) And thanks to Mikhail Egorov for the donation of his wooden board, pieces and DGT clock for use on board 2. Mikhail also gave us the coffee maker that served the free coffee.

I want to give a special thanks to Michel Vasquez and Rene Preotu for helping me in critical situations during the tournament.

And a final big thanks to Bob Gillanders who worked his something off to make this event successful (not to mention rides and stuff…).

From Bob Gillanders Chesstalk
Another successful tournament for the Hamilton crew. Final tally was 83 players, just short of last years record 88. James Williamson wins the contest for closest guess with 70.

Our ridiculously low entry fee of $10 for the U1600 section brought out 38 players with a nice mixture of adults and kids. The low entry fee did succeed in bringing out many new players for their first ever CFC adult tournament. We had 9 players rated under 1000, plus 8 unrated. An encouraging sign was that many of them opted for full CFC memberships.

On display was a wide range of chess talent. At the top end, Victor Plotkin successfully navigated the mysterious Bishop and Knight mate. While at the other end of the room, the slightly easier successful mate with 2 queens.

Top Gun winners:1st – Victor Plotkin 4.5/5 – $ 400
2nd/3rd – 3.5 / 5 – $ 115 each
Roman Sapozhnikov, Hans Jung, Mike Ivanov

U2000 winners:
1st – Rob Gashgarian 5/5 – $ 220
2nd – Mario Moran-Venegas 4/5 – $ 160
3rd – 3.5 /5 – $ 30 each
Richard Chen, Wenyang Ming, Mario Piccinin

Hamilton Winter Open 2013 Rd4

Rd4 Picutures and Captions by Walter De Jong chesstalk Hamilton Winter Open 2013
(Thanks!)
About Walter
‘I, on the other hand, am actually Canadian. Although I haven’t lived in Canada for 25-plus years. When you become a highly specialized scientist, you just move to wherever the (rare) job openings in your discipline happen to be. For me, that’s meant Canada->USA->England->Scotland->back to USA.’-by Walter De Jong on Chesstalk

Round 4 – Top Guns
1 Victor Plotkin — Mike Ivanov
2 Razvan Preotu — Hans Jung
3 Doug Bailey — Roman Sapozhnikov
4 Adam Cormier — Jura Ochkoos
5 Mark Plotkin — Yuanchen Zhang
6 Jackie Peng — Yuetong [davy] Zhao
7 Raymond Singh — Gordon Gooding
8 Joey Zhong — Keith Wight

[Victor had the white pieces, and is on the right-Walter de Jong] 

Victor Plotkin(r) playing Mike Ivanov(l)

Exciting finish to round 4: K, B and N versus K, and on board 1 at that.

A crowd gathers. Does Victor(Plotkin) know how to mate with B+N?

Eventually – yes!

Hamilton Winter Open 2013

Hamilton Winter Open 2013The Hamilton City Chess Club presents a 5 round Swiss on March 23 & 24

Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School
1715 Main Street East
Hamilton, Ontario

Schedule:
Please Confirm Your Registration March 23 at 9:00 am
(Players arriving after 9:20 may NOT be paired for round 1)
Game Times
Saturday – 9:30 am, 2:00 pm and 6:00 pm
Sunday – 11:00 am and 4:00 pm

Sections and Prizes
Top Guns, U2000 and U1600
Top Guns and U2000 will play for cash prizes U1600 will play for trophies
To play in the top guns section you must be 1900 or higher
To play in the U2000 section you must be 1500 or higher

Pre Registration List
Top Guns
Razvan Preotu 2458
(FM) Roman Sapozhnikov 2409
(FM) Victor Plotkin 2371
(FM) Hans Jung 2278
(FM) Doug Bailey 2264
Yuanchen Zhang 2225
Mike Ivanov 2218
(WFM) Jackie Peng 2208
Thair Sabbagh 2198
Adam Cormier 2195
Mark Plotkin 2157
Gordon Gooding 2120
Joey Zhong 2047
Keith Wight 1988
Yuetong [davy] Zhao 1957
Garvin Nunes 102646 1891 (floater)

U2000
Ferdinand Supsup 1909
Richard Chen 1876
Walter De Jong 1869
Mario Moran-venegas 1791
Ralph Deline 1783
Wenlu Yu 1781
Rob Gashgarian 1776
Sasha Chuchin 1775
Wenyang Ming 1755
Robert Gillanders 1753 (floater)
Alexandre Michelashvili 1749
Mario Piccinin 1749
Jason Cai 1717
Patrick L Huang 1712
Lee Hendon 1693
Richard Glew 1692
Eugene Hua 1691
Brian Clarke 1665
Lakes Liang 1638
Daniel Liu 1636
Jaime Solis 1621
Hanyuan Ye 1617
Austin Bonaker-hofmans 1568
Janet Peng 1562
Richard Guo 1521
Immanuel Huang 1506

U1600
Michel Vasquez 1531 (floater)
Gary Hua 1513
Steve Tukonic 1480
Richard Feng 1448
Michael Huang 1371
Henry Peng 1321
Kristen Li 1264
Peter Downie 1251
Kai Gauer 1246
Nameer Issani 1235
Taylor Zhang 1184
Christopher Osborne 1164
Robin Johnston 1157
Ethan Zheng 1153
Kylie Tan 1142
James Williamson 1117
Nicholas Vettese 1114
Monika Wood 1107
Josh Perl 1104
Shuhan Dai 1048
Manxuan [rebecca] Zhang 1004
Dee Wu 999
Tj Boparai 986
Benjohn Libardo 962
Matthew Chertkow 960
Mysha Gilani 925
Haotong Hazel Guo 920
Aahil Noorali 831
Ziv Fridman 674
Binara Sankalpa Sirisena 622
Adrian Calugaru unr.
Justin Greco unr.
Elijah Lopez unr.
Jerry McKitrick unr.
Daniel Perl unr.
Michael Shlega unr.
Herman Alexanian unr.

Rd2 action

Photo-Walter De Jong Chesstalk