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Monday, March 25, 2013

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

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