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Here is the article...a game from the event has been posted below.
Bindi:
I attended the Philadelphia Open from March 27th – March 31st with some fellow Canadians – James Chan (my roommate), Michael Song, Yuanchen Zhang and Aman Hambleton. I arrived on March 26th hoping that by arriving a day early, I would be off to a good start as I wouldn’t be tired arriving on the day of the tournament. Ironically, that wasn’t so as I played some truly awful games and didn’t recover till the 7th round, which by then was too late.
The tournament was hosted by CCA, the chess organization that also runs tournaments like World Open, Las Vegas, and Foxwoods (when it existed). The key problem with the tournaments is always that they often post pairings less than an hour before the round starts and even changing the pairings from the “tentative” ones that they posted beforehand. I don’t know if this is to dissuade preparation or just general laziness on their part but I’ve never heard of tournaments that operate like this.
Apart from that, the tournament was run pretty well with live games on Monroi and plenty of volunteers making sure the tournament goes smoothly. I had a run-in with one of the volunteers who asked me where I was after I left the board for more than 20 minutes in one of my games. I told him straightforwardly that I had to take a dump to which he responded with in paraphrase “next time you have to leave the board for over 20 minutes, tell one of us first,” to which I nodded sure but I was really just laughing to myself.
There were plenty of places to get food in Philly – mainly the terminal where tons of small food-places open shop and lineups for the famous Philly cheese-steak were as long as waiting at any government office building. Additionally, there was Chinatown close by so James and I frequently got Chinese food after our morning games. Unfortunately there were no places open at night apart from a couple of diners – even the pizza places close by 11pm or midnight.
The chess itself was pretty miserable and would have been worse had I not finished 2.5/3 in my last 3 games to gain back some rating. I managed to fall into a matting pattern in one game, lose a rook ending up a pawn in another and finally launch a decisive kingside attack and miss a simple defence in which I had to sac more material just to have a playable position and end up in a losing position only for my opponent to miss the win and offer me a draw. Such is the life of a chess pro wannabe, wandering from tournament to tournament and pretending to play chess.
Overall, it was an enjoyable experience as it was the first time in a long time I found myself consciously struggling in the middle of a tournament and finding my play deteriorating as each round passes. The last time was 2008 at Edmonton International, the last of a grueling 4th 9 rounder that I played that summer and I was able to limit the damage there as well. After round 6 (the game where I lost a pawn up in a rook ending) I gave myself a serious pep talk, worked out and brought myself around for the rest of the tournament. Even though my last game didn’t go the way it was supposed to, I was happy that I was able to turn myself around with a little comeback. Losing sucks but giving up is worse.
Results at - http://www.philadelphiaopen.net/
Bindi:
I attended the Philadelphia Open from March 27th – March 31st with some fellow Canadians – James Chan (my roommate), Michael Song, Yuanchen Zhang and Aman Hambleton. I arrived on March 26th hoping that by arriving a day early, I would be off to a good start as I wouldn’t be tired arriving on the day of the tournament. Ironically, that wasn’t so as I played some truly awful games and didn’t recover till the 7th round, which by then was too late.
The tournament was hosted by CCA, the chess organization that also runs tournaments like World Open, Las Vegas, and Foxwoods (when it existed). The key problem with the tournaments is always that they often post pairings less than an hour before the round starts and even changing the pairings from the “tentative” ones that they posted beforehand. I don’t know if this is to dissuade preparation or just general laziness on their part but I’ve never heard of tournaments that operate like this.
Apart from that, the tournament was run pretty well with live games on Monroi and plenty of volunteers making sure the tournament goes smoothly. I had a run-in with one of the volunteers who asked me where I was after I left the board for more than 20 minutes in one of my games. I told him straightforwardly that I had to take a dump to which he responded with in paraphrase “next time you have to leave the board for over 20 minutes, tell one of us first,” to which I nodded sure but I was really just laughing to myself.
There were plenty of places to get food in Philly – mainly the terminal where tons of small food-places open shop and lineups for the famous Philly cheese-steak were as long as waiting at any government office building. Additionally, there was Chinatown close by so James and I frequently got Chinese food after our morning games. Unfortunately there were no places open at night apart from a couple of diners – even the pizza places close by 11pm or midnight.
The chess itself was pretty miserable and would have been worse had I not finished 2.5/3 in my last 3 games to gain back some rating. I managed to fall into a matting pattern in one game, lose a rook ending up a pawn in another and finally launch a decisive kingside attack and miss a simple defence in which I had to sac more material just to have a playable position and end up in a losing position only for my opponent to miss the win and offer me a draw. Such is the life of a chess pro wannabe, wandering from tournament to tournament and pretending to play chess.
Overall, it was an enjoyable experience as it was the first time in a long time I found myself consciously struggling in the middle of a tournament and finding my play deteriorating as each round passes. The last time was 2008 at Edmonton International, the last of a grueling 4th 9 rounder that I played that summer and I was able to limit the damage there as well. After round 6 (the game where I lost a pawn up in a rook ending) I gave myself a serious pep talk, worked out and brought myself around for the rest of the tournament. Even though my last game didn’t go the way it was supposed to, I was happy that I was able to turn myself around with a little comeback. Losing sucks but giving up is worse.
Results at - http://www.philadelphiaopen.net/
Pretty soon all the kids will be doing it.
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