2009 Foxwoods Open: Return to the Great Beyond
Submitted by
on Wed, 04/08/2009 at 11:27pm.
Hello chess fans, friends, family, pets, spectators, stakeholders, bondsman, critics, pedestrians, and all around curious readers! It has been a great deal of time since my last blog entry, and a great deal has happened in that time. My travels have once again found me in Mashantucket, CT, competing for my second consecutive year in the Foxwoods Open. This seems like an appropriate enough time to revive the blog, right around the one year anniversary of its birth at this event last year. As the future encroaches upon us, continue looking to this spot for more tournament updates, information, travel plans, and general thought gathering. I will be looking to keep far more active here now than in months past.
This year I will be focusing once again on my journey, sights, and experiences, as well as those of other Michigan competitors. A talented group of some of Michigan's finest scholastic competitors have arrived to test their mettle in the Open section of the event, so it appears we will have an exciting few days ahead of us. I will do my best to include coverage of their games and performances here in this blog.
Foxwoods Open is proving to be one of my favorite events to compete in each year, with always memorable travel arrangements, grand hotel rooms, fine playing areas, and an innumerable selection of restaurants and entertainment. Poker players would be especially interested, as this event always falls right around the time that the World Poker Tour holds one of its major tournaments. Today I was able to step into a room and catch a glimpse of the main event final table being played live.
More news on all of the above listed attractions and events to come in future postings. For now, let's get on with the first round results from the Open section, 5-day schedule.
Among our Michigan youth representing us here in Foxwoods this year, we have:
Atulya Shetty (2078) lost the first game to International Master (IM) Oladapo
Olutola Adu (2331) from Maryland.
Ian Edgerle (1911) lost his first round game to Steven C. Zierk (2311) of
California. Zierk is looking to perform well in this event, as he is just a
few points away from earning his FIDE Master (FM) title. We wish him luck for
the remainder of the tournament.
Prashantha Amarasinghe (1994) was on the white side of a long and complicated game against Women's International Master (WIM) Alisa Melekhina (2322), which featured Prashantha withstanding an intense attack on the kingside. It was unclear, when this author last looked at the game, just how the battle was going to result. We will try and have an update on it tomorrow.
As for me, Tim Moroney (1954), I entered into the event much as I expected sitting on the low end of the Open section. I am ranked 8th from the bottom (!), which means I will have a great many opportunities for playing high-class opposition. My first round ended as a relative success, as I drew against Women's International Master (WIM) Iryna Zenyuk (2315) in an intense tactical game that left us both scrambling to make the time-control. "With a 40-moves in 2 hours, followed by Sudden Death of 1 hour" (40/2 SD/1) time limit, she and I both reached move 20, the half way mark, with only 20 minutes remaining on each of our clocks. The last ten moves of the time control (move #'s 30-40) were made with each player having less than a minute to play.