CHESS
HORIZONS
Hurvitz Cup Tournament
by David Yasinovsky
On the surprisingly warm
morning of Sunday, March 7th, I
arrived with Maryanne Reilly at the
Hilton Garden Inn in Waltham. The
lobby was empty, but as we rushed
into the Convention room behind
the entrance hall Ken Ballou and
Brian Lafferty loomed in front of us,
calmly arranging trophies in rows
of ascending height and grandeur.
Chris Bird, a tournament director
for the Continental Chess Association
who had volunteered to help out,
was surveying the convention room
with a slight grimace on his face.
The venue of the tournament had
been suddenly moved from the
Sage School in Foxborough, and
because the Hilton staff had only
had a few precious hours to prepare
the playing hall there were still
many discrepancies left to work
out. The tables were in disarray,
some of them not thick enough to
hold a chessboard, some of them
positioned at angles, and some leaning against the walls, yet to be
assembled. With half an hour to go
before the official start of play, the
prospects for the tournament to start
on time seemed bleak.
Once Maryanne saw the tournament hall, she summoned the manager of the staff. “Victor” was told
briskly to get more tables, and to
find some wingmen to help us
move the existing ones into place.
Everyone was put to work, Brian,
Chris Bird and I adjusting the tablecloth-laden monstrosities into clean
rows of five, Maryanne and Ken
dragging never-ending boxes from
their cars into the hall, and the staff
of the hotel bringing more and more
12
WWW.MASSCHESS.ORG
accessories down from their storage. I taped down the final board
number and Ken conjured up the
first round pairings. All of the
preparations had been accomplished. Children filed into the convention room, while the parents and
coaches were kept intrepidly at bay.
The games could begin.
The next hours passed by
quickly, in a blaze of raised hands,
marked-up pairing sheets, and small
hands clutching ecstatically to
newly earned trophies. All of the
sections were incredibly hardfought, with the high-school section
this year one of the strongest that I,
in my short recollection, can
remember. Wars wer e waged on the
board, and team mates had to watch
in agony as their partner’s lonesome
kings were chased from square to
square, while their opponent’s
friends brimmed with frustration at
his inability to find the lethal blow.
At the end of the carnage, the
lower sections all came out with a
clean winner while the High School,
fittingly, saw a tie between Newton
North and Lexington. The teams
drew each other in round two, and
even though each team won their
other matches to finish at 3.5/4 the
Newton North team took home the
first place trophy as they, unlike the
Lexington squad, had each match
live. The Lexington team had been
issued a bye in the last round (a
consequence of the odd number of
teams in the section) and their tiebreak
had been significantly handicapped
by this. Boston University Academy
rounded up the Podium in the High
School section, their 3.0/4 earning
them a very respectable third place.
In the Middle School section,
Jonas Clarke Middle School won all
of their matches to pull away with
First place, with R. J. Grey Junior
High School snatching second, their
only loss coming to the top-scoring
team. BB&N school, though a rating underdog to its rivals for the top
honors, had a very strong tournament but was hampered by a 3.50.5 loss to Jonas Clarke, which left
them in third place. In the K-6 tournament, Conant Elementary School
cleaned up to sweep first place with
4/4 while the 2-4 places were divided between Bridge School and Sage
School Teams A & B, with the former claiming the silver medal on
tiebreaks.
In the K-3 section, the ratingfavored Cabot School carved their
name on the trophy with yet another
sweep, while the original host school’s
team Sage School Team A picked
up second place with an undefeated
3.0/4. There was a 4-way tie for third
place in the section with BB&N,
Conant, John Nixon, and Horace
Mann laying claim to the title, but
BB&N won out on tiebreaks.
And so an extremely exciting
edition of the Hurvitz Cup came to
an end. The players had competed
valiantly, and even though only
some left the building carrying
hardware every contestant behaved
like a champion, navigating the
crowded and hectic venue as well
as the slightly-overstressed directors
to successfully do what they were
there to do: play chess. The parents
were incredibly co-operative and
supportive, and of course it is