The Wellsburg Open - Part 2

Saturday morning began early as we loaded our tournament supplies into the van, and arrived at the church by 7 A.M.  Pastor Mark of Wellsburg Reformed helped us set up the tables, and my family set up the concessions stand they provided.  Mayor Daggs of the neighboring town of Ackley had kindly loaned me extra tables for the skittles rooms. 

 

Hank Anzis arrived at about 7:30 with Seth, an aspiring player from the Marshalltown chess club.  Registration began at 8:15.  Several players who had not pre-registered showed up on site, so that in total, there were 35 competitors.

The first round was scheduled for 9:00.  I posted the pairings at 8:59, but it took everyone a while to find their seats and set up their boards.  Consequentially, I could not actually start the round till 10 or so minutes later.  Now that I somewhat know how to create pairings, I figure pairings ideally should be posted 8-10 minutes before the scheduled start of the first round, so that I can say "You may start your clocks" exactly when the clock strikes 9:00.  No one complained, but that is one thing I plan to improve.

Time controls were 75 minutes per player, plus a 5 second delay each move.  In round 1, I played Gokul Thangavel (1891).  I have played Gokul various times throughout the years.  Last time, though, he was a bit younger, and not nearly as strong.  This time he utterly destroyed my position, and I found myself in dreadful time pressure.  I finally resigned with 1 second left on my clock (plus the 5 second delay).  

The final ongoing game of the round finished only a few seconds after my game, so I went straight to creating pairings for round 2.  My printer is wireless, and in the first round, I could not figure out how to connect it, since I had only used it on my home network.  So, Hank let me borrow his printer, which was a lifesaver!  For round 2, Hank's printer ran out of ink, so we had to switch back to my printer, which Hank wired to my laptop with his USB cord.  Thankfully we had lunch break to solve problems in.

Charity served pizza, which we sold for a dollar a slice--and she even brought me a piece of my favorite (chicken bacon ranch)!  One thing she noticed was the type most requested by chess players was sausage pizza, which we didn't have.  As far as concessions went, the (free) water went fast.  Pop was not nearly as popular.  Fruit sold well, while candy bars didn't hardly sell at all.  Apparently chess players know how to keep a healthy diet!

We succeeded in printing the pairings; Hank checked them over and noticed several traveling companions would be playing each other.  Since that was not ideal, we put traveling companions on teams and re-paired.

Hank (standing in photo above) has directed over 280 tournaments, and was prepared for anything and everything.  It made a huge difference to have him help direct the tournament, and thanks to his experienced oversight, the whole day went relatively smoothly.

My brother, Daniel, who entered game results for me, was also good to have around.  Mark Capron kept an eye out to make sure everything looked right in the pairings, and James Neal gave a hand in helping figure out commands in my SwissSys pairing software.

In the second round, I was matched against Kevin Townsend (1782).  Kevin had suffered a painful loss against James Neal in round 1, so Neal told me to watch out because Kevin was sure to look for revenge.  

Good advice that was, but unfortunately, I was not prepared to stop the onslaught.  Starting round 2, I was just about persuaded that running a tournament and  playing in it was perhaps the easiest way to die young from fatigue.  I held a more or less even game until I dropped a pawn.  The situation quickly became more painful, but Kevin was quick and skillful with the coup de grace, and I didn't have to suffer long.

Part 3 is coming soon! (Click here for Part 1)