USATE - Rd. 4 Photos

It's late, so not much writing but a few pictures from before the round. Pictured below is the team we really, really, really don't want to play. Why don't we want to play that team? Board one is King Kong, Board two is Josh (our board two's son), Board 3 is Mike and Board 4 is Ben. Those four kids have nicked all of us for a lot of rating points. Ben is the only one of those kids that I have a winning record against. Fortunately they have a 1/2 point more then us so we shouldn't be faced with having to have father play his son.

Chess We Can
Killer Kidz - Adults beware!

Parsippany's Only Chess Club Band

There were only two entries for the chess gimmick. The above group did a take off on Sargent Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was very clever. The lyrics will be posted on the New Jersey State Chess Federation site. I've seen a lot of these chess gimmicks at this tournament over the years. This one was probably one of the best ones ever. They not only won the dinner for four, but Steve decided to give them entry into next year's event.

Here is a portion of their skit on youtube



These cute girls did a patriotic theme, and won chess clocks for their effort.


The winning team name was "I can see Russians from my board". There were a number of Madoff played the Ponziani type names. Our Blagojevich Gambit didn't even get nominated. Geez! All that hard work coming up with that name.

We were back in the small ballroom paired against a kids team. They had older kids on the top two boards and two really young ones on boards three and four. Silvio's opponent was 6 years old with a 500+ rating. He gave Silvio a run for his money, but the bottom two boards ended pretty quickly. All Guy and I needed to do was get a draw between the two of us to clinch the match. It was touch and go for awhile, but Guy some how managed to win a very closed up position. My opponent and I played a long game that went over 4 1/2 hours. We drew our game so we won the match 3.5 - .5. Hopefully tomorrow we'll be back in the action. I'm still looking for my first win! Though 2 draws and 2 losses on board one is not all that terrible. Though the masters have trashed me pretty badly. We'll see what rounds 5 and 6 bring.

For some people there is never enough chess, and tournament would not be complete without bughouse. There were 26 teams in the bughouse tournament. One team achieved a perfect 6-0 score.

Bughouse Champs - Asian Domination
Neph Diaz (TX) and Shin Uesugi (MD)

It's hard to get a decent picture with no flash when everyone is moving so fast! Here is a video of their round 6 win. The mate in 5 combo is quite cool.