2002 Keres Memorial Report

2002 Keres Memorial Report

2002/05/20
Report by Peter Stockhausen:

There was a 4 way tie for 1st (Jack Yoos, Georgi Orlov, N. Beqo, Bobby Meng: 5.5/7) Jack Yoos was the only undefeated player.
109 players participated. The prize fund increased by $2,000 from lastyear.

Upsets galore. In the first round alone, eight (!) upsets out of 23 boards in the top section. Howard Wu lost his first two games, but recovered. Tyler Johnson lost his first two games and withdrew. Pascal had a very rough "ending", losing his last two games.

Bruce Harper played the "longest" chess, pushing three of his games to about six hours. He played a very nice endgame against Spears.

Georgi Orlov chose a Sicilian against Jack Yoos, found himself way behind on the clock right from the start. His position was ok, at onetime maybe even slightly better, but very complicated. In the end he was down to six minutes for 18 moves and then 1 minute for about ten moves.

Fanhao (Bobby) Meng, rated 1999, simply played the tournament of his life. In the last round he defended very well against Jack, who had saddled him with a backward pawn and a lousy B. There was a "winningway" but is was quite complex. Jack did not chose that route and the game was drawn.

It was great to see Bruce Harper return to chess. Nigel Fullbrook seems also to recover and he played a really great game against Milicevic in the last round.

Legendary IGM Duncan Suttles dropped by on Monday, stayed the whole day and watched a lot of the juniors games.

Sadoway came clear first in the under 2000.

In the under 1600 section first place was decided in the last round in a game featuring a 13 year old student of Georgi/Elena against our 87 year old Rodolfo Planas. Rodolfo got the much better game, but lost the thread and the game. Probably the biggest age difference in a deciding game at a Keres.

Lynn Stringer, Mark Barnes and Lyle Craver did their "normal" great TDing. Games will be available soon.

Roman Jiganchine will write a report for the next EP.