Bermuda International Open - Round 5

Finally we're down to the last round. In the morning we agreed to start the last round an hour late in order to not have to contend with fashion show noise. Besides I think some of the fellows wanted to check out the hot models. Actually the male models were pretty nice looking too. Here are a few shots I took during the fashion show. I decided I would play fashion photographer for awhile. It’s not as easy as it looks. I’m not ready to quit my day job.



Sorry fellows this was bridal fashion show, so no scantily clad babes. I guess skimpy bikinis aren’t party of the wedding party attire. Then I decided I would make my fashion statement.

Run-a-way chess fashion diva?

Being that this is a chess blog, I return to chess. On the top boards it went pretty much as I guessed. As I had predicted it was De Firmian against Cummings. I wasn’t 100% about the remaining top pairings, but Charbonneau against Alex Cherniack, and Ivanov against Ippolito. With Cummings at 4 points and the remaining top players at 3.5, there were going to be no grandmaster draws. The draws on those top boards would be hard fought ones. Charbonneau won his game. Ivanov and Ippolito drew. De Firmian had been up a pawn against Cummings, but time pressure forced him into taking the draw. They were the last game done.

GM De Firmian and IM Cummings down to the bitter end.

On a personal note, I survived a major scare in the last round. I played another new player with an estimated rating. I blundered a pawn and an exchange, and was in deep trouble. However my opponent played one move too fast and I won my pawn and exchange back. A potential big upset turned into a win for me, and brought me back to an even score and a small piece of 3rd place in the under 1800 category.

I will post some of my games in a few days. I'm just trying to catch up with results and pictures.

Bermuda International Open - Round 4

There's a lot going on at this hotel this weekend. Today there is a bridal show complete with band and a fashion show. Nigel is giving us his Bermudian fashion statement below. Since the fashion show is occurring right outside the playing room the last round has been moved to 4:00 PM. The second time control has been shortened to G/30 so we still will make it to the closing ceremony and buffet dinner. Did I mention that they like to eat and drink at this tournament?

On the top boards we had

GM De Firminian VS IM Ippolito
GM Charbonneau VS GM Ivanov
IM Cummings VS Denis Strenzwilk

The top two boards were drawn. Denis put up a valiant effort but lost to IM Cummings. That leaves Cummings with the only 4-0 score. I don't know the color situation, but if they're right De Firminian would play Cummings. Should be an interesting last round. I would guess the 3.5 has to play for a win otherwise the others might have decisive results and pass him if he draws. This is never a problem I have to deal with, so who am I to say what will happen on those last boards in round five.

Meanwhile in the back of the room.....

That's my opponent in the foreground. He was playing in his first tournament. They gave him an estimated rating of 1310. He knocked off a 1780 in round 2. I eked out a draw against him. Lucky for me he didn't understand the signicance of outpost squares. He stuck a knight on c5, then a move later traded it for my useless knight on a4. A few moves later he puts the queen on c5 then trades it for my queen on b6, undoubling my isolated a pawns. I will post the game with analysis later, because it's very instructional in terms of using outpost squares and keeping the opponent tied up.

This is the band that was playing during round 4. Fortunately they were playing romantic songs and not AC-DC.

Stay tuned for final results. Hopefully I can finally win a game. 1 loss and 3 draws! Ugh!

Bermuda International Open: Rd. 2

It wasn't quite the same view as yesterday. Unfortunately the weatherman got the rain forecast correct today. However still got to be better then anything that's happening in New York.

There were no upsets in round 1 per se. All the titled players won last night. An unrated Bermudian did put the hurt on his 1800+ rated opponent. I haven't seen all the results from round two yet, so I don't know if there were any upsets. They schedule the rounds at 9:00 am and 3:00 pm. You do the math! No time between rounds if you go the full six hours. I did not.

Larry Ebbin and Donna Reis

Last night they gave all of the out of town players a nice Bermuda canvas tote bag with a few goodies from the Tourism Board. Larry Ebbin, a local player and journalist gave Donna Reis a special bag and gave deep thanks for her generous support of the tournament. I taught Donna's son for many years until he got too strong. Hopefully we have not travelled to Bermuda to play each other again.

Nick De Firminian and Nigel Freeman doing some post mortem of their game from last night.

Carlos Taveres, my second round opponent doing his piece flip.

We had an interesting game that ended out in a draw. While he's playing he sometimes picks up a piece, flips it in the air, catches it and drops it on the destination square. The first time he did it was when he castled. He moved the king normally, picked up the rook, flipped it, caught it in mid air and gracefully set it down on f1. Quite a trick since he manages not to drop the piece before catching it. I had to get a shot of him doing it, but not during the game. So I had him recreate it as we were going over our game afterwards.

Polly does the queen flip.

I asked Carlos to take a picture of me out on the patio. I originally tossed my lens cap, but then decided to try it with a queen instead. I'm not sure I'd ever try to do it during a game. Someone might construe it as showing off. Somehow at a tournament like this, it just fit in. I think it's just part of the local flavor of the tournament. Thanks Carlos for an excellent shot. I may put up the sequence if I can figure out that slideshow thingy.

Time to relax. Round three starts in 35 minutes......Maybe!

Bermuda International Open - Round 3

After my encounter with the piece flipping opponent from Bermuda I had some time to relax and eat lunch. The bad thing about being at a place like this is there's no such thing as a lo-cal lunch. Come to think of it, eating and drinking is a big part of the whole experience. Diet starts on Monday! As I'm wandering around I notice this player relaxing by playing the piano. Since I like to catch all the flavor the event, I took a few pictures and made a mental note to myself. "Check out where he's sitting next round so you know what his name is." I didn't have to look very hard since he was sitting across from me.

Jacob Slepian
Cleveland, OH
Playing "I did it my way"

Sometimes I find older players tougher to play then the kids. Kids attack like crazy, and can be impulsive especially if they're losing. Older players are far more patient and don't give up so easy. I won the exchange against him, and thought I had an easy win. My friends from New York kept looking at the position and were asking themselves, "What's taking her so long?" Mr. Slepian "did it his way" and hung in there. I eventually had give back the exchange and concede the draw. It was very frustrating to let him slip away like that, especially outrating him by almost 400 points. I will post games with analysis when I get back to NY. I was going to put it up with no analysis but I'm having technical issues . I've kind of become the unofficial website for the tournament so I'm basically putting up pictures and some results. My games are becoming irrelevant at this point.

The New York contigent joined Nigel and his group for a lovely dinner at Bacci for Italian food. It was a love dinner, but I ate way too much.

Nigal Freeman, Carol and Ken Troutman
Jorge Vega and Sophia Vega

After three rounds there are 5 perfect scores. No great surprises.

GM Nick De Firminian
GM Alexander Ivanov
GM Pascal Charbonneau
IM Dean Ippolito
IM David Cummings

Bermuda International Open - Day 1

How nice is it to wake up and see this outside your hotel room window? That's how my day started. Note to the guys: Show this to your chess widow. This should convince her that going to a chess tournament in Bermuda isn't such a bad thing.

The water is way too cold for the locals, however the Atlantic in June on the Jersey Shore is colder then the Atlantic off the Bermuda coast in January. I thought it was a delightful way to start the day!

This is the 25th Bermuda Open. Denis Strenzwilk from Maryland has played in all of them. That's him pictured below.



I've known Denis for a long time from my days playing in Maryland before moving to New York. He's one lucky guy to have been able to play every year since it started.

Part of the charm of this tournament is the Bermudian hospitality. Thursday night there was a cocktail reception at one of the local's home. Today there was lunch at Nigel Freeman's home. Nigel is the organizer of the event. He made leg of lamb and roast pork. I had the lamb and it was outstanding. Sitting in his back yard I actually got a little bit of color from the sun. If anyone tries to tell you the sun isn't a problem in January, don't believe them. I didn't get burned, but now I don't look like I've been living under a rock in NY all winter.

Our gracious host serving lunch.

Hanging out in Nigel's living room talking about World Championships and other fun stuff.

Who can name the two grandmasters?

Jorge Vega of Mexico, Continental FIDE President of the Americas making the ceremonial first move for Nigel on board one. Nigel got paired against GM Nick De Firmian.

Meanwhile down on Board 23, Gary Cooper of Bermuda and me shaking hands before the start of our game.

It was an interesting game. I had some excellent chances but messed up. Here's the game.


Polly-Gary013009.pgn


Back on Board One..... White is drinking red wine. Black is drinking white wine.

Stay tuned for more pictures and news from rounds two and three. It's supposed to rain, but I can't complain. The weather was very nice today.

Bermuda International Open Blitz

In one those amazing feats of NYC aviation, my flight actually left ahead of schedule. If anyone has ever flown in or out of New York they know what a miracle it is to not be in a long line of planes trying to fly out of JFK. Getting out of New York early meant arriving in Bermuda early.

It's a Bermuda Open tradition to have a cocktail reception for the players at one of the local's home and then return to the hotel for a blitz tournament. I knew I would not make it for the reception, and I figured I might get to see the last round or two of the blitz. However I forgot about "Island Time". No matter whether one travels to the Virgin Islands, Bahamas, Bermuda or any other tropical island, people do things on island time. It means everything is done at a leisurely pace. The chances are if something is scheduled for 8:00 pm, it's more likely to start at 9:00 pm.

When I got off the plane I called one of my friends to let her know I arrived. The security people weren't too happy with me talking on the phone so I had end the conversation promptly. That would really suck to get tossed on the next plane back to New York because I was yacking on my cell phone. Though the one piece of information I did get was that the blitz had not even started yet.

After getting my luggage and going through customs I recognized GM Nick De Firmian. He had come down on the same flight with GM Pascal Charbonneau and another New Yorker Conrad Ho. We shared a taxi to the hotel. No, I did not get any pointers on the way to the hotel. :-)

We got to the hotel in time to join the blitz tournament for round two. Conrad and I got paired against each other. He smacked me around in the first game, and I drew the second game. That was dumb luck since I was getting mated as he ran out of time. I didn't even realize he had run out of time, so I thought I had lost. I won round 3 2-0. In round 4 I lost 0-2 and in the last round I won 2-0. In that last round I got extremely lucky in the first game. I had one second left. All my opponent has to do is make any move and I'm going to lose on time. He went into a deep think and used up his remaining 10 seconds. My 5.5 points was good enough for 2nd under 1800. $25! $5 of it in Bermudian money that I will have to spend here.

This tournament is organized by Nigel Freeman. (Pictured below.) He does a wonderful job putting the whole thing together. Tomorrow all the players are invited to his house for lunch.

Nigel figuring out who won what.

Carol Jarecki, Tournament Director.

The winners from left to right.
IM Yan Teplitsky 8.5, GM Alexander Ivanov 8.0, IM Dean Ippolito 7.0

Class prize winners:

Under 2200 - Andrei Moffat

Under 2000 - Moses Mufandaedze

Under 1800 - Max Steinberg

Under 1600 - Kennedy Simmons

First round is 8:00 PM tomorrow night. Wish me luck!

Leaving On a Jet Plane.....

...and I know when I'm coming back again. Greetings from JFK. I'm off to Bermuda this evening to play in the Bermuda International Open that starts tomorrow. This will be my first time playing in this 25 year old tournament. It's something I've wanted to do, and this year I finally got the chance to go.

I will be making posts during the tournament. Hopefully I will have some good games to share with you all. Pictures will also be included. This is my first time playing in a FIDE rated event. It is also USCF rated so it will be another place that I'm getting to play in a tournament. Since Bermuda is not a state, I can't count it towards my quest of all 50 states.

I've been told it's going to rain all weekend down there. Rain in Bermuda has got to be better then the crap we've been having in New York lately. Tonight there is a blitz tournament, but I won't make it down there in time. Unfortunately American Airlines daily flight to Bermuda doesn't leave until 5:15 pm.

Ciao! Stay tuned.....