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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