Yours Truly at the US Amateur Team North
Tuesday, February 21, 2012 at 10:33PM I mentioned several posts ago that I played this past weekend. The event was the US Amateur Team Championship - the Northern division. It was a successful event, but not quite successful enough - we took second on tiebreak, and I took second in the tournament amongst players on first board. (My score was 4.5/5; GM Alex Shabalov went 5-0.)
I didn't play my very best chess, but my play was both reasonably good and decently entertaining and lively. So over the next 2-3 weeks I'll go through my games in my ChessVideos.tv shows, for those who are interested. (For those who aren't, don't worry: we'll get back to part 6,425 in my "Quick Ruy" series soon enough.)
Also, for those who are interested, you can see a mini-report and a picture of my team here.
Reader Comments (3)
Congratulations! Not being fully content with a second prize is a healthy sign of man who knows his worth. It will be hard to do even better next time, but I'm sure you will try for a clean sweep!
BTW, what is an "amateur" championship in the USA if Shabalov is playing? World Amateur Championships allows players who have not been over 2000 in the previous two years and don't hold any title -- that seems pretty reasonable to me. What are the criteria in the USA?
[DM: It does seem funny that a GM plays in an "amateur" event, but that's in fact standard in this tournament. In fact, Karpov once played in the USAT East when he still had the FIDE version of the world title, and that would pull the concept of amateur to the breaking point if anything would. The solution to the mystery is that "amateur" modifies "team", so as long as the team's average rating is under 2200, almost anything goes.]
Is GM Shabalov an amateur? In general, how did they define "amateur"? Dennis, even your participation could be questioned as you (seem to) earn some money from chess - though this is more likely to be "below the line"!?
The German Chess Federation defines amateur as Elo <2300, which is of course just as arbitrary as anything else.
[DM: What counts is that the team be "amateur", which the US Chess Federation defines as one with an average rating below 2200.]
I didn't think you would go for that "Hopey Changey" thing!
[DM: You are quite correct. The person who came up with it (not me!) didn't either, but offered at as an expedient when we were registering, and had thought to do it ironically, but it didn't really work.]