Chess For Fun at Schenectady

Thursday night, June 30th saw another in the summer series of casual events at the Schenectady Chess Club. This time it was a six player round robin Game in 20 minute tournament. Participating were: Dean Howard, John Phillips, Tim Wright, Glen Perry, Richard Chu and Cory Northrup. The last one of these, a couple of weeks ago had a surprise winner. This time there was different kind of surprise; a four way tie for first! The final standings were; tied at 3 - 2 Tim Wright, Glen Perry, Cory Northrup and John Phillips! Dean Howard finished at 2 - 3, and Richard Chu had a 1 - 4 score.

When the group began to gather for the sign up, it appeared members of the Albany Chess Club would be the majority with Wright, Howard and Perry joining only Chu from Schenectady. The late arrival of Phillips and Northrup made for fifty-fifty split of Schenectady and Albany players.

In the first round results were as ratings predicted. After that the upsets commenced. In round two Cory Northrup defeated Expert Dean Howard, and I began to get the feeling we’d see something akin to what happened two weeks ago. In round three Northrup again pulled off another upset defeating Glen Parry. The headline for round four was that Cory could not upset Tim Wright, rather Glen Perry managed a minor upset of John Phillips. In round five the Black side won all the games. Wright lost to Phillips, Howard was upset by Perry, and Chu lost a game to Northrup in which Chu had the better of it for some time. The game then became a fairly standard Rook versus Rook and Knight draw. Mr. Chu somehow found a tactical error that allowed mate and lost the game.

These two recent just-for-fun unrated events have shown at fairly quick time controls even the high rated local players are vulnerable, and even the guys well down the rating list are dangerous. The most noteworthy result from Thursday was Cory Northrup, with a rating just under 1600, stayed with the Class A players; Wright, Perry and Phillips to tie for first.

The group consensus was these game 20/15 unrated events were enjoyable and should continue. It is planned to hold another on July 14 at Schenectady. If you are interested; the door opens at 7:15, registration from then to 7:35 with play beginning before 7:45. The next event will be Game in 15 again. The slightly quicker time control will allow play to finish before 10:00pm. Come on out and see if you can upset an Expert!