US Amateur Team East, Aeroflot Open, and Linares

Hey all, I’ve been on a little hiatus from blogging the last couple of weeks. For good or for worse, I’ve started playing a lot of poker again, and it’s been taking up a lot of my time. Anyhow, my team didn’t travel down to the Amateur Team East last weekend because a few of our team members got a nasty stomach flu right before the tournament. I can’t say I was all that disappointed since it gave me some more time to hit the poker tables!

The big story down in Parsippany was this 3 GM team: Izoria, Perelshyteyn, and Dzinzi with a 100 rated player on board 4. A lot of the players were outraged that a team like this was allowed to play. As far as I’m concerned, I really don’t care if this team is allowed to play. Yes it does ruin many teams chances of winning the tournament, but it’s within’ the rules and it’s good to see GMs coming out and playing chess for very little money. I am not sure what their motivation was for playing, but that’s for them to decide. In the end the 3 GM team ended up winning 6-0, and I am pretty sure their board 4 lost every game.

Meanwhile over in Russia, the Aeroflot Open has just ended. Former New Hamsphire Champion Josh Friedel finished the tournament strong with wins in rounds 8 and 9 over 2400+ players. His final score was 5.5/9, or +2, which is pretty good in such a strong section. Unfortunately Josh’s roommate IM David Pruess had a miserable tourney with only 2.5/9. I’m sure they’ll both be happy to get back to the states after being in Russia for what seems like forever.

Linares has been keeping me entertained for the last week. The games have been very interesting, and no one seems to be settling for quick draws. Carlsen just beat Topalov the other day with the offbeat Alekhine’s defense.. Hey I thought only Nakamura played that!!??! Magnus must have played one too many blitz games against Smallville on ICC.. Anyways,  the commentary on ICC’s Chess.FM has been really great. Kudos to the GMs Christiansen, Ronen Har-Zvi and Fedorwicz, you guys are definitely my favorites. I won a 3 month extension to my ICC account in their Trivia Contest a couple of days ago. The question was “How many decisive games were there in Linares last year”. I totally just guessed 18 as quickly as I could and it happened to be right… Yippie!!

The North American FIDE Invitational tournament is going on in Chicago right now. My buddy IM David Vigorito started off a little shaky, but has found his stride winning his last 3 games. He now has 4.5/6. I hope to play a few of these IM Norm tourneys in the coming months. The time control is a little fast though, G/90 with a 30 second increment each move. I’ll definitely have to tie up some loose ends in my openings before I play these things, since it’s absolutely critical you know your openings cold in this time control. You can check out the games from this tournament on the Monroi website, that is if you can actually find where the live games are located.. They just changed their site and it has just about the worst navigation system I’ve ever seen. They must be following in the foot steps of the USCF website… Oh well enough ranting, back to poker!