Colorado Chess Informant Enero 2013 | Page 19

Volume 40, Number 1 Colorado Chess Informant January 2013

Prize Breakdown for the 2012 Colorado Labor Day Weekend Chess Festival

by Chief TD Jerry Maier

The Colorado Labor Day Weekend Chess Festival was a grand experiment where three tournaments were held over the course of the Labor Day weekend, August 31-September 2. Friday August 31 had the GM Simul, which was overlapped by the Colorado Quick Championship. Sept 1-2 saw the usual Colorado Open but with a much larger turnout than expected. In this case, the current trending heuristic of expecting about half of the number of pre-registrants, in this case 53, to be the number of registrants on the day of the event did not pan out, since more than the full number of pre-registrants showed up to register the day of the event, an additional 74 players on Saturday morning, for a total of 127. What follows is the breakdown of prizes either paid out at the event or mailed to the prize winners by September 11, 2012:

GM Simul with Alex Yermolinsky( 1 Simul game, 1 pass allowed, 27 Colorado players, 1 GM)

No one was able to defeat the GM. But Justin Alter, Rhett Langseth, and Jason Loving each drew the GM- quite an impressive feat! They received an autographed picture of themselves shaking hands with the“ Yermonator”.

Colorado Quick Championship( 6 rounds, Swiss, G / 10; d3, 34 players in 1 open section)

Much thanks to Fred Spell for being the TD for this event while I ran between this venue and the Simul, dropping in as a house player at various times during the Quick to move the evening along. At the request of the participants, and with the approval from then CSCA President Paul Covington, the initial prize fund of $ 50.00 was increased to $ 230.00 so that 79 % of the Entry fees collected were paid back out to the players. The smaller prize fund originally set was to allow the rest of the entry fee money to cover the smaller room rental on Friday night. With the increased prize fund, that money was not available, and needed to come from entries for the Colorado Open and / or as a separate line item from the CSCA general fund.

Colorado Open( 5 rounds, Swiss, G / 90; inc30, 127 players over 3 sections)

Much thanks to my TD staff of Fred Spell, Cory Foster and Rob Hartelt, as well as Chief Organizer Paul Covington for their support throughout this event!

Though first place clearly went to Yermo, he is not a Colorado resident. As the rules on the CSCA website indicate the title of Colorado State Champion goes to a resident of Colorado. In addition, there are to be no co-champions. Therefore tie-breakers are used to determine said champion. Prior to the start of Round 1 the tiebreakers to be used in order were: Modified Median, Solkoff, Cumulative Score, Total Blacks, and Kashdan( Aggressive Play). Brian Wall had 10 points in Modified Median, whereas both Michael Ginat and James McCarty had 13 points. Since Michael had 14.5 points at the Solkoff point, whereas James had 14, Michael was awarded the title of 2012 Colorado Open Champion. k

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