Sunday, February 22, 2015

US Amateur Team East/World Amateur Team 2015

This is one of my favorite tournaments of the year.  Over one thousand players form amateur teams where the rating is 2199 or under & play six games over three days.  Pictures from the event have been provided from the previous link.

The NJSCF staff running this event do a fantastic job every year.  Chief Organizer Steve Doyle always manages to give lots of prizes away before various rounds, & he'll do them in a fun matter, for example, first person to the mike with a Delaware quarter, or first person to the mike with a laptop.  I was lucky enough to wear an Amateur Team shirt from a previous year & won a book on Larry Evans.  There are prizes for best team name, so a lot of teams tried to do variations on the NFL DeflateGate Scandal, Bill Cosby, & other hot cultural topics.

My play entering the team event wasn't the good - I just came off a subpar performance in Baltimore where I recorded no wins in 5 games.  I did a little bit of research on Old Indian & King's Indian Lines a day before the team & got an immediate opportunity to test my research out.

I forgot to mention that Black's King isn't very available & the game transitions to an ending far faster than in most games.

This was a fun experience.  My team from the last few years broke up, so I got pulled onto a friend's team that needed a one-year replacement for their Board 1.  I ended up doing something I have never done before - finish a multi-day tournament with no losses.  I just narrowly missed a Candidate Master Norm with a draw in the last game, ending up with a score of 5 points (4 wins, 2 draws).  As a team, we finished with 3 match points, & nobody finished with less than 3 individual points!

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