Road Trip!!

Time for Polly's traveling chess circus to take to the skies and waters and head to the Pacific Northwest for an Easter weekend of chess.  I am making a return appearance to the Grand Pacific Open in Victoria, British Columbia.  Hopefully this year I will have smooth sailing from Seattle to Victoria, and not a ferry long side trip.  Being that it's late April the weather should be better.  However with the Pacific Northwest you just never know.

I hemmed and hawed over whether I wanted to make the trip again.  The other option was the Philadelphia Open which would have taken less time to get to, but it's too much like playing in New York.  I'm sure I would have played several of the usual suspects from the Marshall Chess Club that I inevitably play when I go to Philadelphia.  I don't need much of an excuse to jump on an airplane and travel across the country.  However playing chess is as good an excuse as any.

This is the first of three chess trips planned between now and Memorial Day weekend.  I can't tell you where I'll be playing chess from June onward.  I can tell you one place I will not be returning to.  I am not going back to Las Vegas.  As the old expression goes "what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas."  This year what happens in Vegas is staying in Vegas without me.  I'm not knocking the tournament itself.  The National Open is top notch in terms of organization and directing staff.  However after two straight miserable tournaments out there I've come to the conclusion that all the noise and lights of the casino atmosphere is too distracting.  The first year I blamed it on jet lag and playing the two day schedule.  Last year I came in earlier, played the three day schedule and still my tournament sucked.  Trying to decompress between games was too difficult with the cacophony of ringing bells and whistles of the slot machines, the bright lights and the cigarette smoke.

Victoria, on the other hand is Old World charm at it's best without having to go to Europe.   One can do afternoon tea at the Empress Hotel pictured below.  It's a beautiful old hotel.  No the tournament is not held there.  However I don't think I could even get a closet in that hotel at the chess rate.

 A three tiers of delicious tea sandwiches and pastries.  A meal in itself.

The Empress sits at the head of the harbor. There are all sorts of boats that go out for sails around the harbor.  There are also whale watching tours.  Being the intrepid one I got on one those little Zodiacs and went to see whales.   I did see whales, but that won't be a journey  I'll be taking on this trip.  Whale watching in late June is one thing.  Whale watching in April is a whole other thing.

Life on the high seas? I had a whale of a good time!

Old ship at dock.

Provincial Government Building at dusk.

Spring in Victoria.  Beautiful flowers in bloom.

However it's not just the city itself that draws me back.  It's really nicely organized tournament.  Having learned from last year I will be traveling much lighter this year.  I have my Mon Roi, a notebook, and a few pens for chess equipment.  I didn't bring a board, set or clock because all of that is provided.  For my European readers that's a given.  However if I showed up in Philadelphia or almost any other weekend Swiss in the United states without all my gear I might be running around trying to borrow a set and board if my opponent didn't bring one.  Even worse I might be at the mercy of the kid who shows up with pink and purple chess pieces on a neon pink board, or the old guy with the ancient BHB analog clock and a plastic chess set from 1969 with a broken cross on the king.

I'll be providing periodic updates throughout the weekend, and perhaps some games if time allows.  If you can't wait for me to post games they will be live on the Mon Roi website.  In case you didn't notice I did post some games from the club championship.  I must have left everyone speechless because neither game has evoked one single comment.  :-)

Games! Spoiler Alert....No Train Wrecks.

It’s Monday night and it’s the make up round.  5 rounds down, one to go.  There’s only one game to be made up, but it’s not happening tonight because it’s the first night of Passover.  One of the players involved in the make up game is Jewish the other is not.  When I initially set up the schedule for the tournament this was the scheduled date for round 6.  I had wanted to finish before Easter.  When I had to redo the entire schedule because of so many late entries, I thought perhaps I need to check the calendar before setting up new dates.  It's then I discovered that this was the first night of Passover, and perhaps I should not have a regular round. 

I’m not sure what it is about the players in this tournament, but there seems to be communication breakdown. I send out emails asking the players to figure out when they’re going to play the game since they’re not going to play tonight. I see a wall post on Facebook from one of the players to the other saying “Where do you want to play our game tomorrow?” No response. I guess that’s because the response was showing up tonight and asking “Where’s Alanna?”


“She was planning to play you tomorrow. I’m running a game/30 tonight. Do you want to play?”

Fortunately he said yes, and that got me off the hook. I had already entered myself into the tournament to even out the numbers. I was perfectly happy to take myself out of the tournament. This means I am going on three weeks without playing one single game of cracktion. My last game of Game/30 was on March 31st. For the month of April I have played four games of “slow” chess. Slow is relative since the time limit was G/85. That may be fast to those accustomed to playing 40/2 G/60. However for this cracktion addict G/85 is slow. Having the extra time helped me in rounds 2 and 3.

In the first round I drew with Alanna Katz.  In the second round I played her father.  There are three sets of family members playing in the tournament.  I have two father and child combinations and a set of brothers.  Thankfully the results of the family members have differed enough that I haven't had to adjust pairings to avoid family members playing each other.

It was a tough game.  I had burned a lot of time early on, and found myself very pressed for time in the end.  It also didn't help that I had a pounding headache.  The YMCA moved us out of the after school program room into the kitchen.  Often there are smells from a strong disinfectant.  I think the smell gives me headaches.  I won two pawns and headed into a rook and pawns ending with 12 seconds on my clock.  Fortunately the 5 second time delay gave me time to work things out.  When I got down to be so short on the clock my opponent offered me a draw.  It briefly entered my mind to take the draw and gain the half point.  However I felt despite the lack of time, I should be able to push one of the pawns through and force him to give up his rook for one of them.  I knew I just needed to avoid checks.  Here's the game.

AKatz-PW031411.pgn


Our game had drawn a crowd since we were the last game left.  I don't recall whether we played any moves beyond what I had recorded.  The following week I would have a similar type of ending with lots of time pressure.  That game I did stop keeping score, but I also diagrammed the final position.  In this game I did not diagram the final position which leads me to believe maybe my opponent had resigned where my notation stopped.  Although I do find it hard to believe he resigned with my pawns so far back and me being so short on time.  Even me who tends to resign too early would not have resigned in that position.

In round three I got paired up again.  That was not surprising considering I had 1.5 points out of 2 against the Katz family.  It's too bad Ben Katz isn't playing.  Maybe I could have gone for three Katz in a row. Instead I'm playing Mike Amori who I've played a number of times before with not such stellar results. 1 win, 1 draw and 10 losses.  It looked like loss number 11 was coming after I lost the exchange on move 27, and it really should have come by move 42.  Thankfully he missed the killer queen sac on move 39 that leads to mate in 4.  Neither of us had seen it. 

I had another pounding headache and there were a number times that I just wanted to resign and go home.  However when I'm the tournament director that's kind of hard to do.  I could just have someone send me the results, but with the group I never quite know what to expect, so I play on and hope for the best.  In this case Caissa showed me favor for my persistence.  I managed to get the exchange back and end out in another rook and pawn ending up three pawns.  I felt like I had seen this position before. 

Here is the game up the point I stopped keeping score:

MAmori-PW032111_0.pgn

Below is the final position when White ran out of time. 

White to move. 

There is no defense for White.  He can try 1. Rxf3+ Kxf3, 2. Kh2 Ra1 3. Kh3 Rh1#.

Reality would set in the following week when Joshua Colas would kick my butt badly.  That game isn't even worth posting.  The next game I'll post is my round 5 draw that I really should have won.  However being up two pawns in a minor piece ending of knight versus knight wasn't so easy for me.

The Inmates Are Running the Asylum! More directing headaches!

I think I must have jinxed myself when I made the following comment a few weeks ago: "I find directing a 200 player scholastic tournament in one day easier then directing a 26 player tournament that is spread out over the course of 9 weeks."  This past Sunday I directed a scholastic tournament that ended out being the chess tournament from hell.  I had players in wrong sections, or in no section at all.  There were the no-shows and switching pairings to take care of the no-shows and the late arriving players.  It seemed like I had to redo the pairings in the top sections at least two to three times in the first round alone.  Any changes I had made in between repairings would get lost. When I would go to pair the second round all my changes had gone into a black hole, and I would have to put the changes back in and start over again.  It also doesn't help when people are telling me things that impact the pairings, but because it wasn't given to me in writing, it didn't get done. I can only remember so many things before my brain goes into overload.

Because I have the computer set up in the playing room, I not only deal with doing pairings, but sometimes I have to make rulings on the floor when there are touch move disputes or other problems.  I don't know but there was something in the air on Sunday.  There were more disputes and temper tantrums in that one tournament then the other 5 in that series combined.  The most common dispute occurs over touch move.  Did the opponent touch a piece or not?  Touch move is one of the most frustrating claims to make a ruling on. 

If one goes to the rulebook to look up the rule she will find herself reading the following paragraph before even reading the rule itself.

TD Tip: Without a neutral witness Rule 10 depends on the reliability of both the claimant and the opponent.  If they disagree then the TD should strongly consider denying the claim. In most cases, by denying the claim the TD shuts the door to all false claims.  Upholding a false claim usually does more harm to more players than denying an accurate claim.  (page 20 USCF Official Rules of Chess)

Now to the touch move rule itself.  10B: Touch-move rule: Except for 10A (adjustment of pieces), a player on move who deliberately touches one or more pieces, in a manner that may reasonably be interpreted as the beginning of a move, must move or capture the first piece touched that can be captured or moved.  See also 10E, Accidental touch of a piece; 10F, appearance of adjustment.

 I underlined "deliberately" and "reasonably be interpreted" for emphasis because these are key to dealing with claims.  A kid will often try to call touch-move on his opponent when the opponent's hand hits a piece while reaching for another one.  He claims touch-move even before the opponent gets his hand on the piece he's intending to move.  Sad to say there are kids who will try convince the opponent that he's required to move the piece even though it was an accidental touch.  This is where the tournament director gets called over.  In situations like this it's fairly easy to to make a ruling denying the claim.

There are situations where the opponent will admit he touched a piece, but that it was an accident because he was really intending to play a different move.  "I didn't deliberately touch the bishop.  I was planning to play Qb5 the whole time." Yeh, right!  Actually there is a whole TD tip devoted to that particular scenario.

TD tip: "Touch-move rule" claim without a witness. After talking to the claimant and opponents, TDs will find that opponent often insist that they did not "deliberately" touch a piece.  Often, after some further discussion, the TD will find that some of the opponents really dis physically touch the piece in a way that they intended to move it (not an accident); however they will explain that they really intended to move another piece; therefore, believe that since the "touch" was not literally "deliberate" (since they intended to move another piece), the rule was not broken. The TD will have to uphold the claim in this instance.

Those instances are pretty easy to deal with.  It's when both players are very insistent about what they did that it becomes tricky.  If the TD asks the same question a number of times he will often get at the truth.  I recall Steve Immitt dealing with two adults in a letting go of piece dispute.  The way he continually asked the claimant's opponent to him what he did with the piece, it became clear that he had let go ever so briefly.  This is a slightly different situation since the claim was about letting go of the piece in question.  The players could agree on the fact that the piece had been touched.  In dealing with kids it's often a matter of not understanding the rule.  That was the situation in most of the incidents I had in the scholastic tournament.

What happens when adults have this kind of dispute?  Adults understand the rule and are not as prone to trying to misapply it in situations such as accidental touches or touching one piece while planning to move another.  The latter I refer to as "thinking with one's hand".

After my scholastic tournament from hell on Sunday, I had the club championship from hell on Monday.  I was really hoping all the pairing problems were behind me.  I had not gotten any frantic emails or phone calls with messages saying they couldn't make it that night.  I thought I would get through a round with all 26 players in attendance, and be able to make round 5 pairings based on actual results.  The good news; all 26 players were there.  The bad news; I may have been there in body, but my chess brain wasn't there.  I made a dumb decision not to trade off my opponent's knight.  That knight then came in and busted open my king side, and within a few moves I was lost.  I was very disappointed in how I played that round.  However losing was the least of my problems.

I was putting my equipment away when I hear two players having a heated discussion.  I come over to see what the problem was.  One player was claiming that his opponent picked up his knight, started to move it, put it back where it was, and make a completely different move.  The opponent claimed he did not touch the knight.  I tried the "Immitt technique" of asking the same question, and have each player show me what happened.  I was having no success with this method because both players were emphatic about what happened.  The claimant demonstrated that the opponent picked up the knight and started to move it.  The opponent demonstrated that he reached for the knight, did not touch it at all, much less pick it up and start to move it.   It was a case of "he said/he said".  The players at the adjoining board said they didn't see anything.

Everyone was getting annoyed at the ruckus so I asked the two players to leave the room so that we could discuss it without disturbing everyone else.  I'm totally annoyed that these two players are acting like children and that one of them is lying.  The problem is I have no way of telling which one is lying.  It's not a case of someone reaching for a piece and not realizing that they may have touched it.  It's the claimant saying that the opponent actually picked up the piece and started to move it before realizing that moving it is a blunder, and the opponent saying he didn't pick it up.  The claimant tells the opponent that's "Bull $h!t" What's a TD to do?  Follow the TD tip on page 20, and hope that denying the claim doesn't impact the result of the game.

The claimant was so pissed off. Later on he came out of the room and told me "I'm so pissed off. I can't believe he can lie like that." I told him"You know the rule.  You've seen it with your students.  There is nothing I can do.  Calm down and try to beat him." He tells me he can't concentrate because he's so angry.  I would have liked to see him win so that non-decision wouldn't hurt.  It looked like that's what would happen. He was winning pretty much until the end when he messed up the ending and lost. 

What can I say? Another strange night at the chess club.  After 4 rounds I have  a score of 2.5 - 1.5 where the average rating of my opponents has been 2024.  Wins against an 1890 and 2025, loss to a master and a draw with a 1950.  Despite the craziness I've played well for the most part.

I know I keep promising games. They're coming!

WaCkY wEdNeSdAy!! April Fools! It's Freaky Friday!

It's been awhile since I've posted any games that were Wacky Wednesday worthy.  Thankfully it's mostly because I haven't had any of those totally absurd games that left me scratching my head and saying "What was I thinking?". Unfortunately that streak came to a crashing end with this butt ass ugly miniature played on Monday.

DGarrett-pw032811.pgn


I wish I could end this post with "This didn't really happen. Aprils Fools!", but unfortunately it really did happen.  I don't know where my brain was at that point.  Maybe I was too busy thinking about Sunday's games or the Club Championship make up games that were being played that night.  I can't blame it on time trouble.  As the expression goes "$4!# happens!"  I guess every once in awhile I need one of those types of games to remind me that I need to work on my openings and tactics.

Bob Peretz CC vs CC of Fairfield County - Rd. 2

The first round was closer then I thought it would be considering the rating differences from board five on down.  Maybe having White in the first round helped us out.  Instead of simply changing colors and playing the same player over again, we had a little different format.   Our board one would play their board two. Their board one would play our board two. Board three played board four, etc.  This switching would go all the way down to board eight. Since there were an odd number of boards in the match we had to change things a little more, otherwise board 11 would have played the same person again.  For boards nine through eleven CCFC tournament director, Melvin Patrick and I set it up so nine played eleven, ten played the other eleven, and the other nine played the other ten.

Melvin Patrick

Fellow TD, and Team Captain for CCFC

Despite the fact that a mere two rating points separate Melvin and me, we did not end out playing each other.  Instead I played their board six, Hanon Russell the man behind the excellent website Chess Cafe. Perhaps I'd be better served spending time on his website reading Bruce Pandolfini's most recent column. Pandolfini gives some excellent advice to the father of a kid who loses on time a lot.  Dan Heisman also has a timely article in his Novice Nook column.

Hanon Russell

Chess Cafe

Hanon and I had a very closely contested game that probably would have been a draw had I not run out of time.  It was knight versus bishop ending.  I had the bishop which was not quite as active as his knight.  Unfortunately in games where there are clock issues the knight can be a real thorn in the opponent's side since there is always the possibility of forks.  I managed to dodge any potential fork threats or any other time pressure implosions in this game.   Flagging leads to the same result as imploding, but it doesn't necessarily make for such an exciting finish. Here's the game.  I was satisfied with my overall play.


HRussell-pw032711.pgn

 I still can manage a smile despite my 0-2 day.

I wish I could report that the second round was as close as my game.  Playing Black didn't reap such good results and we lost the round 8-3. 

Bd     Res  White (CCFC)                Res  Black (BPCC)


1         1    Harrison Wheeler (2254)   0    Michael H Bodek (2277)

2         0    Daniel L Lowinger (2265)  1    Oliver Chernin (2243)

3         1    Benjamin Katz (2122)        0    Michael Amori (2027)

4        ½    Ian Harris (2231)               ½    Jason Shi (1969)

5        1    Hanon W Russell (2057)      0    Polly P Wright (1700)

6        1    Alex Eydelman (2060)          0    Hubert Herring (1665)

7        1    Melvin B Patrick (1698)       0    Anthony Lawrence (1632)

8        0    Alanna Katz (1958)              1    Noah Rutkovsky (1465)

9        1    Aman Karunakaran (1509)  0    Michael Morin (1336)

10      1    Druha Karunakaran (1577)  0    Jose Leon (1322)

11     ½    Joshua Blanchfield (1529)    ½ garrett washington (unr.)

The final score of the overall match was:  CCFC - 14.5 BPCC - 7.5. The stake of the match was losing club submitted the results and paid the rating fee.  $5.00 was a reasonable cost for a day of good chess.  Hopefully a rematch with a longer time control can be set up in the near future.

Bob Peretz CC vs CC of Fairfield County Match - Rd. 1

The East Coast version of the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis has recently opened in Norwalk, CT.  The Chess Club of Fairfield County opened its new building in the winter.  It's quite an impressive space.  They challenged my club to a match at their location.  I've been so busy it was actually my first chance to go there since they opened.  A number of players from my club also members of their club so there was a bit of case of divided loyalties.

Main playing room.

Players from both teams warming up.

Trying to get this match organized had its aggravating moments.  The original format was two game at a time control of game/90.  I had 14 people who expressed an interest in playing and said they were available.  It turned out CCFC had scheduled a lecture by Danny Kopec for 4:00 pm that same day.  They wanted to shorten the time control to game/60 so that we would finish in time for the lecture.

International Master Danny Kopec

A week before the match I email everyone to confirm whether or not they were going to play.  Several people now had conflicts and had to drop out.  Another player replied that he had no interest in playing game/60.  Of the five people who now weren't coming, four of them were rated over 2100.  There went most of the meat of the BPCC line up.  I knew CCFC had a number of masters that would be playing for them.

After everything was said and done I had 11 players for our team.  CCFC had 13 players so they gave us one of their players to even out the match.  They gave us Oliver Chernin who's rated 2243.  That would help our depleted line up somewhat, but still once we got to board five the rating difference was heavily weighted in CCFC's favor.  In round one we had board one vs board one, board two vs board two, etc.  We also would have White on all the boards in the first round.  On board five I would be playing their board five, Alex Eydelman, a 2060 who I've played a number of times at my club.  We've always had some wild games where both of us have very little time left on the clock.  This would be one of those rare games where we started with more then 30 minutes on the clock.   Despite the game/60 time limit I would still have severe clock issues.  The game was pretty close until I got under a minute and then all hell broke loose.  It wasn't a pretty picture at the end.

Here's the game.

pw-AEydelman032711.pgn


The first round was actually pretty close with CCFC winning the round 6.5 to 4.5.  The results looked like this:

Pairings for Round 1. BPCC vs CCFC Match


Bd   Res White  (BPCC)                 Res       Black (CCFC)

1       1    Michael H Bodek (2277)    0        Daniel L Lowinger (2265)

2       0    Oliver Chernin (2243)        1         Harrison Wheeler (2254)

3       1    Michael Amori (2027)        0        Ian Harris (2231)

4       1    Jason Shi (1969)                 0        Benjamin Katz (2122)

5       0    Polly P Wright (1700)        1        Alex Eydelman (2060)

6       0    Hubert Herring (1665)       1         Hanon W Russell (2057)

7       0   Anthony Lawrence (1632)  1         Alanna Katz (1958)

8       0   Noah Rutkovsky (1465)     1         Melvin B Patrick (1698)

9       0   Michael Morin (1336)        1         Druha Karunakaran (1577)

10     1   Jose Leon (1322)               0          Joshu Blanchfield (1529)

11     ½  Garrett Washington (unr.)   ½       Aman Karunakaran (1509)

Top boards

Harrison Wheeler and Daniel Lowinger of CCFC

With colors reversed things would not be so close in round two.  Stay tuned.....

Adventures In Directing: Club Championship Headaches!

In a typical year I'm involved with directing somewhere between 30 and 50 tournaments a year.  They range in size from a single 4 player quad to a scholastic tournament with over 200 entries.  There are times I'm involved with even larger tournaments.  When I'm directing tournaments for other organizers it's often easier because I just have to show up and do what ever they tell me.  When I'm organizing the tournament then I get to deal with all the little details.

I find directing a 200 player scholastic tournament in one day easier then directing a 26 player tournament that is spread out over the course of 9 weeks.  The one day tournament is just that. It's done in less then 24 hours.  Run the tournament, submit the memberships and results and it's done.  Yes things can go wrong like incorrect results being recorded, crazy chess parents, crying kids, bad rulings, etc.  However once the day is done the headaches go away for the most part.  There will be times where something that happened at tournament on Saturday comes backs and bites me on a Tuesday.  Fortunately that doesn't happen too often.

However running a club championship that takes a few months to complete can create new headaches almost on a daily basis.   I laid out a schedule for the club championship that would begin the last Monday in February and end in mid-April.  However Murphy's Law strikes again as sometimes life gets in the way, and I had to miss the first round.  I had another director start the tournament.  He had 14 players show up the first night.  I was a little disappointed in the turnout, but I knew there were going to be a few players who couldn't play the first round.  

I thought it was going to be about 4 players including myself who couldn't make it.  My plan was to pair those players and have them play the make up round scheduled after round 2.  However extra 4 players turned into 7, then 9 and finally 12!  I couldn't exactly pair 12 players as having drawn in round 1.  Pairing pending games as draws is a typical practice in these types of events.  However when the highest rated player is one of the latecomers, I decided I needed to schedule the first makeup round before Round 2. That entailed completely redoing the schedule and sending out more emails with the new schedule.

With a tournament like this I try to keep even numbers so that no byes have to be assigned.  I had carefully paired up the latecomers, and then got another phone call asking if I could take another player.  I told the mom to bring the kid and I would see if I could get him in for that round, or give him 1/2 point bye for round 1 and have him play in the game/30 I was running for players who did not have a make-up round.  This particular kid always takes a bye in the last round of the game/30 tournament so that added another wrinkle to the equation.

I was trying to get the make-up round going, and also run the game/30.  I thought I was going to have an even number in both tournaments.  I decided I would have the kid play in my place in the club championship so that I wouldn't have the last round bye problem in the other tournament.  I could always take a 1/2 point bye in the club championship and play in the game/30.  If this wasn't confusing enough, I forgot to put enter one of the players into the game/30 tournament.  I didn't realize that until I read the pairings and the player asked "What about me?"  Oops! I took myself out of the game/30 and put him in my place.  After everything was said and done, I played no chess that night.  Probably just as well since I was suffering from mass confusion and indecision.

I thought once I got all the make up games out of the way, and could pair normally for the second round everything would be fine.  However when you have kids playing in the tournament there is always going to be the "bug of the week".  I had two kids who got sick over the weekend and couldn't play on Monday evening.  Did one really think they would have been paired against each other?  No, that would have been too simple.  Could I repair their respective opponents against one another and have the kids play each other on another day? Nope.  The two kids were too close in rating, and it would have entailed pairing a master against a 2100 in round two.

I let the two opponents know that they would not have a game that evening and would play during the next scheduled make-up round after round three.  One of those players responded to my email with a rather lengthy rant that started out, "I know this isn't the interzonal, but..." He seemed annoyed that someone could reschedule their game like that.  Hey it's not my fault he didn't check his email until an hour before the round starts.  I sent the email out Sunday night.

Going into round three I have these two unplayed games.  With games that need to be made up there is the director's dilemma.  Pair them as if the higher rated player won and pray there are no upsets, or pair as draws and have some strange round three pairings.  We've always paired the unplayed games as draws instead of risking the possibility of totally unfair pairings in the event the higher rated player loses.   Since it's a six round tournament the top rated players are going to end out playing each other almost no matter what.  Assuming a minimal amount of upsets they will play each other in rounds four, five and six.

The way things turned out, number one ended out playing number two in round three.  It was not the ideal round for those two to play each other, but that pairing was going to come up in round four, or maybe round five at the latest.  The pairing did provoke a blistering Facebook message saying. "I totally disagree with this pairing." Once I explained that number three and five were paired as draws, and that everything would straighten itself over the course of the remaining rounds, he seemed satisfied.

Having settled the pairing issue I thought everything else would run smoothly for the third round.  Wrong!  Murphy's Law strikes again.  In this case I would call it "Wright's Rule of Siblings" If older brother gets sick, little brother will catch it a week later.  Sure enough I get another email from their dad saying that now the younger son is sick. Oh well, at least the following Monday is the make-up round.  Now both kids can come that night. To make matters worse the third round opponent of the older brother emails me and says she's not feeling too well and could she play next week during the make-up round.  Argh!!! When will it end???  I wrote back and said she would have to work it out with her opponent and play before the make-up round since he was already scheduled to play someone else that night.

All of that being said and done at least Murphy has the decency to stay away while the actual games are being played.  This has allowed me to play my own games without being interrupted by disputes or draw claims.  I had a couple of odd ball pairings due to all the maneuvering I did in order to get the first make-up round off the ground.  Since I put the one kid in my place, I paired myself against Alanna Katz who couldn't play that evening.  We would play at her house the day before round two.  I paired us as a draw since I didn't want to wait until Sunday night to put out round two pairings.  People like to know ahead of time who they're playing.  Pairing that way had me playing her father in round two. As it turned out Alanna and I actually drew our game, so our second round pairings ended out being based on the correct result.

Despite all the craziness related to running this tournament I'm having a very good tournament so far.  I have 2.5 out of 3 despite being paired up every round.  Depending on the results of the make up round I could be playing number one in round four.  I certainly was not expecting to be playing on board one or two in the fourth round.  Unlike the Westchester Chess Club Championship that I won in 2009,  I have a snowball's chance in hell of winning the Bob Peretz Chess Club Championship.  I'm ranked number 18 in a field of 26 players that includes two masters, and five experts.  I did beat one of the experts in round three.

Games to follow in upcoming posts.