Friday, January 12, 2018

In the Lens of Our New Club Champion

This year’s 101st Annual Edward Lasker Memorial, or the Marshall Chess Club Championship, field included strong players such as GM Sergei Azarov, IM Djurabek Khamrakulov, and former Club Champions GM Irina Krush and GM Sergey Kudrin, but it was the 15 year old phenom IM Nicolas Checa that surprised everyone by seizing the title of 2017 Marshall Chess Club Champion. He did this by tying for first with GM Azarov scoring 7/9, and subsequently winning the playoff against the grandmaster in stunning fashion.

The tournament started smoothly enough for most of the top players, with almost everyone rated 2200+ winning their first round games. GM Sergey Kudrin suffered two draws in a row right from the beginning- one of them to WIM Evelyn Zhu, who is rated approximately 2100. William Yen, also rated around 2100, scored an upset victory against IM Justin Sarkar in the first round as well. Although Zhu and Yen had little chance of winning the event, they still managed to shake up the tournament with these upsets!

Going into the event, IM Checa intended to obtain a GM norm with his performance, as the Marshall Chess Club Championship has been a norm granting tournament in the past. However, the playing field did not allow him this opportunity despite his stellar performance because there were not enough foreign players.

Along the way to the championship title, IM Checa drew IM David Brodsky, GM Azarov, GM Kudrin, and IM Victor Shen, winning the rest of his games. After an exhausting 9 rounds, Checa had to face Azarov again. Like everyone else in a playoff position against a higher rated player, he felt “a bit unsettled before the playoff. Once it started, it felt like a normal blitz game.”

The playoff was a thrilling two rounds, which many spectators enjoyed watching. Nico started it off with an unusual decision by choosing to play with Black first after winning the coin toss. He explained his decision clearly: “I won the coin toss and decided to choose black for the first game… This seemed to have surprised some members of the audience. My thinking was that I would have a better chance to react to a negative outcome with White in the second game.” His strategy paid off: after a first round draw, IM Checa was able to win the second game as White.

Chief Arbiter Greg Keener added “A lot of people were surprised and maybe even a bit  confused by Nico's choice to play the first game with Black after winning the coin toss but it actually makes sense if you think about it.” He added “I think Aronian made a similar decision in a playoff recently as well, so it isn't without precedent.”

As to what we can expect from our club champion in the future, IM Checa will be looking for his norms, which he says he will earn “hopefully at the MCC.” With our big, summer New York International, he would be able to come back to earn the norm, like IM David Brodsky did earlier this year. IM Nicolas Checa wants to specifically earn a norm at the MCC “since that’s the place where [he] started to play.”

FIDE Arbiter Greg Keener offered to annotate Club Champion IM Nicolas Checa’s games, which many readers are sure to feel inspired by:


Full results from the tournament are posted on the Marshall Chess Club’s website.

Labels: ,

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home