#12 Tournament Announcements

Kenilworth Swiss
USCF-rated
Thursday, October 5th (rounds 1-2) &
Thursday, October 12th (rounds 3-4)
Time Control : G/30
Entry Fee : ? (It was $6 last year.)
Registration : On 10/5, from 8:00 to 8:30 p.m.

site :
Kenilworth Community Center
575 Boulevard
Kenilworth, NJ

I expect the Kenilworth club will open at 7 p.m. those nights, as it did last year.


West Orange Fall Swiss
USCF-rated
5 rounds
starting Tuesday, October 10th
Time Control - 40/90 then 30/60
Entry Fee : $15

10/10 - (round 1)
10/17 - (round 2)
10/24 - (adjournments & postponements)
10/31 - (round 3)
11/7 - (round 4)
11/14 - (adjournments & postponements)
11/21 - (round 5)

site :
Toby Katz Community Center
650 Pleasant Valley Way
West Orange, NJ

The WOCC club meets on Tuesdays, from 7 p.m to midnight.
For more details, contact John Haggerty @ 973-736-3433

#11 Holmdel wrap-up

NM Mark Kernighan vs. FM Tom Bartell on Board 1

I have added Kernighan-Bartell & Jim Cole’s win to the Holmdel Java replay page & PGN file.

Thanks to Mike Goeller for sending the above photo.

#10 Games from the West Orange match

The Java replays & PGN with Thursday’s games against West Orange have been uploaded.

#9 Kenilworth crushed by West Orange

The Kenilworth CC, playing without 3 of their top 4 players (FM Steve Stoyko, NM Scott Massey, Michael Goeller), took a whooping at the hands of visiting West Orange last night, 7.5-2.5. NM Peter Radomskyj scored the decisive point.

Glen Hart & Joe Demetrick notched wins for the home squad. Ari Minkov managed a draw. Kenilworth had won the previous meeting (at West Orange, on 6/22) by a 6.5-3-5 count.

3 games from this event & 2 more from last week’s Holmdel match will be posted in the next few days.

# 8 Handicap Tournament - round 1

Mann - Minkov
White to play & win

The Springfield Handicap got underway on a surprising note last night as Ted Mann & Bert Shiffman upset the 2 top seeds. I overcame my opponent’s 3-move advantage & won a nice game.

Here’s a Java replay page & a zipped .cbv file* with all the contests.

* This is a compressed ChessBase archive. To read it, you’ll need a ChessBase product, such as ChessBase Light, which you can download for free.

#7 Kramnik leads World Championship

Vladimir Kramnik beat Veselin Topalov again today to take a 2-0 lead in their 12-game match. Topalov missed a win on move 32 :

White to play

Games 1 & 2 in Java replay & PGN.

Game 3 is Tuesday. You can watch it on FICS or U.S. Chess Live, among other places.

#6 Bartell brillancy in D.C.

Before the start of last night’s match, folks at the Holmdel CC raved about Tom Bartell’s Atlantic Open win against Larry Kaufman but they didn’t have the full score. Luckily, I found it in a recent The Week In Chess issue (#617).

Tom’s effort deserved all the praise it has & will continue to receive but Kaufman could have kept the upper hand by declining the 1st sac (15...b5) & avoided a trip to my morgue by refusing the 2nd offer (16...Nxd5!). Once the following position was reached, White was lost :

Kaufman-Bartel
Black to play & win

Here’s the Java replay & PGN for you.

#5 Kenilworth beats Holmdel!

The Kenilworth CC scored a surprising win at Holmdel last night, thanks to a 5-0 sweep by Greg Tomkovich, Mike Wojcio, Joe Demetrick, Joe Renna & Jim Cole on boards 6-10. Michael Goeller’s draw against Vladimir Lipman brought the score to 5.5-3.5 & secured the victory.

Holmdel won the first meeting, in Kenilworth, on April 22nd, by a wide margin but, on this occasion, they were without FIDE Master Anatoly Volovich & expert Steve Anderson.

I have annotated Goeller’s clinching contest & my loss to Brian Katz. You can replay those games online or download the PGN. I’d like to present more games from this event (including Kernighan vs. Bartell) but, to do so, I need your scores. Please e-mail them to me.

#4 Springfield Handicap Tournament

A 4-round handicap tournament will be held at the Checkmate Chess Club from 9/24-10/15. The lower-rated players will get White + an extra move for every 200 points of rating difference. Entries are being accepted thru Saturday 9/23. Join now

#3 KST Wrap-Up - part 2

Java-replays for the deciding games & a zipped PGN file with 33 games (21 annotated) are up. Here’s a symbol key, if you need it.

For the event overview, let’s examine the top performances:

- Greg Tomkovich struggled in rounds 1-5, losing twice & nearly dropping 2 other games. But he went undefeated (7-0-2) the rest of the way, upsetting NM Kernighan in week 7 to grab a share of the lead and beating me in last round, to claim clear first. Greg followed his KST triumph with a 3.5-1.5 score at the NJ Open.

- Mark Kernighan The 2005 KST champ, got off to 5-0 start but hit a big bump in weeks 6-11, where he failed to win a single game (0-1-3). Mark skipped rounds 9 & 11 to play 5-minute games against non-competing players and, in the end, this affected his final standing.

- Devin Camenares dropped 2 of his first 3 games but lost just once in the last 10 rounds (7-1-2) and proved to be an under-rated unrated!

- Ari Minkov had a excellent event despite an extended vacation (7 weeks!). He suffered but 1 defeat in 9 games (4-1-4) and nicked Kernighan for a pair of draws.

- Joe Demetrick continued his run of successful Kenilworth results by finishing with a +2 mark.

- Richard Lewis didn’t join until round 6 and was under the radar for most of the tourney but he won 3 late games and vaulted to 5.5-0.5.

- Ed Selling was undefeated thru the first 10 weeks (4-0-2) and had a good showing overall (+2). However, losses to the co-runner-ups nudged him out of the top 5.

- Anna Matlin finished at 1.5-3.5 but impressed everyone. She could have been +1 if not for time pressure stumbles against Goeller & Camenares. Anna gathered additional notice by drawing NM Peter Radomskyj at the 8/20 Westfield Swiss.

- I played poorly & deserved a lower placing. Only my event-high 17 games kept me in the mix.

P.S. - For more on the 2006 KST, visit The Kenilworthian archives.

#2 KST Wrap-Up - part 1

Here are the final standings from 2006 Kenilworth Summer Tournament, which ended August 31st...

1. Greg Tomkovich 10.5
2. Mark Kernighan 9.0
2. Devin Camaneres 9.0
4. John Moldovan 8.5
5. Ari Minkov 6.0
5. Joe Demetrick 6.0
5. Pat Mazzillo 6.0
8. Richard Lewis 5.5
9. Ed Selling 5.0
9. Mike Wojcio 5.0
11. Ted Mann 4.0
12. Bert Shiffman 3.5
13. Javier Moreno 3.0
14. Anna Matlin 1.5
15. Scott Massey 1.0
15. Michael Goeller 1.0
15. Joe Renna 1.0
18. Geoff McAuliffe 0.5
19. Joe Azzarello 0.0
19. Laukik Gadgil 0.0
19. Jorge Rivera 0.0
19. Jim Cole 0.0

... plus a Crosstable of the event.

2 prize-deciding games from the last (14th) round and an overview will follow within a few days.

#1 Introduction

Hi Chess Fans. I’m John Moldovan, a correspondence-chess expert (USCF 2120) and contributor to the Checkmate Chess Club site. As noted above, my blog will primarily feature annotated games but reports on local events & clubs will appear from time to time. Thanks to Michael Goeller, author of The Kenilworthian & the Kenilworth Chess Club webmaster, for his encouragement and this opportunity.

P.S. - I hope NBC, Universal, Glen A. Larson Productions and Jack Klugman don’t sue for copyright infringement!