Pics!

"Simple Minds" playing at the USATE Tournament, 2007.



I have set up a Flickr album for my USATE pictures here.

No shots of Larry C. and Joel Benjamin drinking rum, dang.

-Matt

Miracle (?) Draw

Back from Jersey, there will be more posts with pictures, etc. but I wanted to show maybe the coolest move of mine from the tournament. I'm playing black in the following position:

I've blundered an exchange but got the c-pawn and white's bishop on g2 for it, losening the king a little. I came up with the crazy 28... Qa8! The game continued 26. Qxe7 Qxe4+ 27. Kh2 Qe2+ 28. Kg1 Qe3+ with a draw by repetition.

Analysis by Fritz & Rybka show white shouldn't accept the piece, and play 26. Rae1 or Qxe5. Even then black has some comp for the exchange.

Pretty cool.

Heading to Joisey!

I'm off tomorrow to the US Amateur team East tournament in Parsippany, NJ. This is a huge team tournament where the average rating has to be under 2200 USCF.

This is my second year in a row, and I can't wait. It's a lot of fun. There's no pressure for prize money like the World Open or something, but there's always the pressure of doing what it takes for the team to win or draw a match. And there is beer.
We never did find a board 1 player, despite my advertising campaign (see this post, and a comment to this story on the USCF website), so we'll be picking up a random straggler at the tournament. Last year we got an unrated guy from Brazil (I think?) who played very well for us, but the unratedness meant they used the average of just our three ratings which misrepresented our strength. Hopefully no unrateds this time.

Look for pictures, posts, etc. here in the coming days!

-Matt

New USCL Franchises Announced - Name Suggestions

The US Chess League announced Wednesday the two new franchises will be in Queens, NY and New Jersey. Name suggestions follow:

• The Queens Queens
• The Queens to h5 (Nakamura on board 1)
  
• New Jersey Turnpikes
• The Jersey Cows
• The NJ Badda Bings

Leave more suggestions in the comments!

I don't know how I feel about two more teams from the Gotham area, but I guess they each got significant sponsorship, so money talks. They certainly will have plenty of players to choose from. It doesn't seem to be too representative of the rest of the country though. I can hear Clint Ballard screaming "East coast bias!" now.

Nothing from L.A.? Chicago?

-Matt