2003 National Open Chess Tournament

I have just returned from the 2003 National Open Chess Tournament. This was a six game event in which each player had 2 hours to make his first 40 moves and an additional hour to finish the game. This year marked the 20th anniversary of the the event taking place at the Riviera. There were nearly 900 players at the event.

The tournament was broken up into sections based on United States Chess Federation (USCF) ratings. The Championship Section had a first prize of $5000. Eight Grandmasters tied for first place with a score of 5 out of 6. They include: Alek Wojtkiewicz, Sergey Kudrin, Petr Kiriakov, Gregory Serper, Hikaru Nakamura (who beat Bobby Fischer's record as the youngest American to become a Grandmaster), Alexander Shabalov, Ildar Ibragimov, and Jaan Ehlvest. The other sections were rated Under 2000, Under 1800, Under 1600, Under 1400, Under 1200, an unrated section, and a scholastic section. You can find crosstables for all the sections here. Just click on the results button on the left.

I was very happy with my result in the Under 1600 section. I scored 4.5 out of 6. I had 4 wins, 1 draw and 1 loss. My loss was to Khahn Duong, who ended up tying for first place in my section. I finished ninth overall out of 150 participants in the Under 1600 section.

Also of interest at the event was a demonstration of a replica of the automaton chessplayer, known as "The Turk."

Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen, a member of Maria Theresa's court, invented the Turk in 1770. The Turk is known to have played and defeated Philidor (the great French champion), Napoleon, Edgar Allen Poe, and Benjamin Franklin. The original Turk was lost in a fire.

Posted by Chris at June 17, 2003 02:13 AM | TrackBack