State No. 19 - Iowa

Madison County Bridges

First off, I apologize for the delay in writing this blog post.  I meant to write this the day after I got home, but I didn't get around to it & had to attempt to prepare for my annual house of horrors tournament (NJ Open), where I am now -16 in my career.  [It is the strongest tournament I play in regularly & I regularly struggle in this tournament.  However, since this is my second closest tournament I regularly play in & this is my home state, I am obligated to play in it.]

The first thing I opted to do on the trip was drive around & visit all 6 bridges of Madison County.  The trip takes about 4 hours, & you are driving mostly on dirt roads as you go from bridge to bridge.  Many of these bridges are not at the original locations, but it is still amazing to see the construction they did on these covered bridges in the 1800s.

By the way, if you do this trip, your phone or camera should be more than 30% full.  Having to constantly use my wireless charger was a very interesting experience.  (My spare camera was not charged & that battery died at the first bridge.)  I should have imitated the last leg of the bridges trip & just used the map & the guide signs to preserve phone battery.

Location: Imes Bridge

This bridge had a signing that I interpreted as Cranford.  I joked with my friends from Cranford, NJ that someone wrote Cranford 2017 on this bridge

Location: St. Charles Welcome Center

For some reason, I recognize the Little Golden Book symbol/company, though I never had this particular book when I was younger.

Well, If I ever get lucky enough to raise a kid, I suspect this would be good to read to said kid. (Yes, I did purchase this.)

Location: Cedar Covered Bridge 

This bridge was burned for the second time early in 2017.  A random couple did the engraving customs that couples like to do on these bridges in 2016.  They broke up, & the guy wanted to remove the engraving, so he set the bridge on fire.  The arsonist was arrested, along with two others.  

The local government & historical agencies are attempting to raise money to rebuild the bridge.  The facebook page below has more information on this.

https://www.facebook.com/notes/rebuild-cedar-bridge/help-us-rebuild-cedar-bridge/1928626087420959/

Location: Roseman Bridge

Now, apparently there is a book & movie in the romance category titled The Bridges of Madison County.  While out here, I did not tell anyone that I have not read the book or seen the movie - they just all assumed I did at least one of the two.  This bridge is the one featured in the movie.

I consulted with my friend Squared for eating recommendations, & she pointed out Bluebird Cafe to me as part of her recommendations.  This place was so good, I wrote a 5-star yelp review (https://www.yelp.com/biz/bluebird-cafe-north-liberty, look for my username thekecmaster) & my first 5-star facebook review (username: thekecmaster) of this place.  Look for this place in North Liberty, Iowa.

However, in addition to that, the menu has a description using the phrase "...other whole positive integers."

When a friend with a mathematical nickname recommends a great place with a mathematical reference in their menu, well, that's hard to top!

Odd notes: I had the same waitress when I ate at Bluebird Cafe on Friday night & Saturday morning.  (Yes, it was that good that I went back.)  I saw the same person eat at Bluebird Cafe Saturday morning & at a random Panera Bread closer to the tournament hotel on Sunday morning!  #greatmindsthinkalike

Location: Iowa River Landing Wetland Park

I stayed at the Coralville Marriott, & behind the hotel is the Iowa River Landing Wetland Park.  I think it used to be a brownfield redevelopment site, but they did a fantastic job of transforming the site.  There is a metal walkway & a path on the non-hotel side around the park.

I ate at Fuzzy's Taco Stand & Scratch Cupcakery & enjoyed both places.  I took home the souvenir cup & a shirt, respectively.

The chess playing was so-so, though I was not the only person to struggle.  A WGM playing in this event managed only a second round draw in the first two rounds.  I lost the first two games & won the last 3, losing 7 rating points in the process.

The last round was interesting as my opponent didn't castle & I opted to chase the king throughout the game.  This was one of those classic themes where the a player wastes time in the opening & ends up forfeiting the right to castle.

And that concludes State No. 19.  #fiftystatesofchess

State No. 18 - Nevada

It should be noted that I was not able to leave the Strip or the Downtown area due to some damaging phone issues.  So I pretty much only did CrossFit, Hoover Dam, Fremont Street, & The Strip until the tournament started at the Westgate Las Vegas Hotel.  This blog entry will not cover any part of Las Vegas outside these areas, as I did not get to any.

I wrote a medium-to-long length review of my experience at Freestyle CrossFit on my yelp profile, & I'm providing a link to it right here: FreeStyle CrossFit review  Suffice to say, I regretted going to this place.

Very important warning about Fremont Street & the Strip: If you hate secondhand smoke, avoid these places.

There are a lot of people walking around & at least half of them smoke.  My eating & sleeping habits were affected so badly that I couldn't enjoy most of my meals & had a hard time finishing entrees that I normally finish without difficulty.  The insides of casino hotels are usually no better since smoking is allowed in the casino areas.  There may be exceptions, but I was not lucky enough to find them at the Bellagio, Caesars Palace, MGM Grand, Planet Hollywood, Westgate Las Vegas, Circus Circus, Harrah's, & the Linq.

While I did visit the Venetian & the Palazzo, I visited the second floor & thus avoided the Casinos.  I detected no secondhand smoke there, but I did see a few gondoliers, as they created an indoor water area for anyone to ride a gondola in for the right price.

At Bally's, if you approach Bally's from the Las Vegas Monorail system, you can gain access to a food court where I did not detect secondhand smoke.  Very important to be able to eat away from the tournament hotel & not have to worry about such bad air.

The Las Vegas Monorail takes you from the SLS Las Vegas all the way down to the MGM Grand, stopping at Westgate Las Vegas, Las Vegas Convention Center (site of a Magic Tournament during the same weekend as the Chess Tournament), Harrah's/The Linq, Flamingo/Caesars Palace, Bally's/Paris, & MGM Grand.  Cost is $5/single ride, $12 unlimited for a 1-day pass, $22 for a 2-day unlimited pass, & other rates on their website.  Las Vegas Monorail.

I did schedule a trip to the Hoover Dam.  It is a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark.  I also got to see the Mike O'Callaghan - Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, which was built to bypass the Hoover Dam.  The tour guide Preston was great - he was able to explain in detail how it was conceived, the construction process, & lots of other interesting facts about the Hoover Dam.  The exhibits are very interesting - they even had one exhibit about special words the workers used while on the job.

I highly recommend you go & visit.  It is between 60-90 minutes southeast of Las Vegas.

The National Open is one of the most efficient, large-scale tournaments that I have ever been to.  In four of the first five rounds, the total starting round time delay was all of 3 minutes.  This was so small that I had to be told that rounds started late & the TD staff was angry that lateness occurred. (For comparison, when I last played in the World Open, 20-minute delay to a round was a good round.)  The TD staff are on point about enforcing rules & settling disputes, & no controversies that I know of erupted.

Now, I haven't finished analyzing all my games yet, but I show you my Round 3 win because I believe that the positional pawn sacrifice/breakthrough is something I struggle with even as recently as a year or so ago, & this is more of an attacking style game that would be interesting to readers.  Attacking players can find the buildup & breakthrough fascinating, while positional players can recognize that attacking the king was the only correct strategy here.  (Also showing this to you since it breaks the pattern of me typically showcasing an ending of some sort.)

(I apologize for ampersands not showing up in the text - it is my kryptonite.  I love using the ampersand, but ChessBase notation doesn't react well to it.)

I do have an interesting Queen vs. two Rooks game that I would like to show you, but I have not yet finished analyzing this game & this may be a separate post.  (Of particular contention is where I believe White has an advantage in a certain variation with the engine agreeing, but the play looks very difficult to execute & I'm not certain that these best moves can be found naturally.)

One of the interesting things about this tournament is that in the last round, with Black having draw odds, the winner gets the board & the set.  I won my last round outright, so I was able to go home with an extra board & set as shown here.

This finally explained to me why I occasionally see National Open Chess Boards - the organizers give them away at the end of the tournament!  This is very nice of them!

I finished with a 3.5 out of 6, not enough to win money.  However, the organizers gave $50 gift certificates to the plus score players (for the uninitiated, a plus score is a score that is above 50%.), so I was able to walk away with a few extra chess books.  I'm not going to object to getting something in my third out-of-state tournament out of three out-of-state tournaments this year.

The tournament organizers will apparently mail a commemorative DVD with the pictures, games, newsletters, & more.  When I receive that DVD, I will post a picture of it.  So I guess there will be an addendum post to cover the DVD image & the Queen vs. two Rooks game I promised you.

And that concludes Nevada, State No. 18.  #fiftystatesofchess

State No. 17 - Montana

I got off the plane in Missoula around 4:14 or so local time.  I had been in contact with the Owner of 5 Valleys CrossFit, & we had discussed me dropping in either Thursday night, Friday morning, or Friday night.  Missoula Airport is, however, small enough that I was able to get my rental car situation squared away before the checked baggage carousel activated.  I was already off to 5 Valleys CrossFit in about 15 minutes.  Those of you from my area know that the time from plane landing to sitting in a car heading to [Insert destination here.] is not usually that fast in Newark Airport.

It should be noted that along the outer edges of Missoula, that there are various places that advertise that they have casinos inside.  Apparently the gambling laws are very different out west, though that shouldn't be a complete surprise.

On Friday morning, I ended up taking a short hike to the M on the M trail.

http://www.missoulian.com/app/hikebike/MS-mtrail.html

Having not hiked in over a decade, plus doing 2 WODs within the last 24 hours (I went back to 5 Valleys CrossFit on Friday morning), plus almost choosing the wrong path, resulted in me taking around 37 minutes to reach the M.  (Unknown distance on the harder path to get there, elevation gain 620 feet)  There were, however, some beautiful views & I tried to capture some of them while I was up there.

I went back to the room, napped for far longer than I thought, & then made my way over to the Historical Museum at Fort Missoula.  The funniest story I remember reading when there was that the fort commanders tried to stop a group of Native Americans from traveling southeast by building a hastily-erected earth & log barricade at Lolo Canyon, but the Native Americans went around them.  This site later became known as Fort Fizzle.

I took additional pictures of a one-room school below & the internment center during World War II.  Except for the school, none of the outer buildings on the grounds were open as it was too early in the calendar year.

This was the second trip in a row that a friend of mine joined me on the trip.  My friend was a classmate of mine in college, but she happens to live in Montana now.  I met her & her family for dinner in the downtown area.

It should be noted that this is the first time I drove through an area that had flashing yellow arrows for dedicated left turn lanes, as the downtown Missoula area has several of them.  They seem to love this in the Northwest, as a Professional Engineer once spent a two-page email telling me about its benefits.

Before I move on to the chess game, it should be noted that there is no sales tax in Montana that I observed, similar to Delaware.  You know your bill instantly by simply adding up the prices of things you ordered.

The tournament was interesting.  It is safe to say that I was the only player from the eastern time zone at this tournament.  Gary Solomon & Daniel McCourt did a good job of organizing the tournament.  It was strange at first, but refreshing overall to hear them introduce me as the player coming from New Jersey prior to the start of the tournament.  These two, as well as a few others, gave me some warm welcomes & overall were pretty friendly.

There was an interesting oddity in Round 2 - Out of 9 games involving a Round 1 winner, 6 of them finished in draws, including mine.  I can't recall ever seeing 2/3 of the field do that.

I had a hard time selecting a game for this blogpost, as I promised my third round opponent that I would not post the miniature, & the other games were decided in the ending.  I have selected my game against the Oregon National Master in the Fourth Round.

After drawing this game, I was able to win the last round & seal up a tie with the Oregon NM for first & second, marking this the 5th state that I have won a prize in.

Full standings available as a pdf here: http://www.montanachess.org/2017/04/09/2017-mt-open-april-1-2/

Edit: Map updated

And this ends State Number 17.  #fiftystatesofchess

State No. 16 - Delaware

This was a short trip, but I still got to make one sightseeing visit & one CrossFit visit before the tournament started.  One of my friends actually joined me for a few meals.

I got to visit New Castle Courthouse Museum.  (Free to visit, ample parking in front.)  Found out a few interesting facts from my historian/tour guide:

Lumberton, NJ was named for a gentleman who eventually settled in the present day area of Lumberton, NJ.  Prior to settling there, he was convicted of inciting the natives by engaging in the fur trade illegally.  He had to relinquish all his furs.  An Englishman was caught years later in the same crime, & Lumberton served as a juror on that case.  The Englishman was also found guilty & forced to relinquish all of his furs.

The Audience would be to the left of this picture.  Once a verdict is reached, the sticks are rotated so that they can see the verdict.  On the White & Red Arrow sticks, white is innocent & red is guilty. 

Penn’s Landing is actually two blocks from the New Castle Courthouse Museum.  When Penn first landed in America, he stepped foot in New Castle, Delaware first, not in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

CrossFit Diamond State – Drop In

Coach Gia, the Owner, was very nice.  I ended up doing Open WOD 17.3 Scaled with them at the 4:30pm class.

It was tough, as squat snatches are a clear weakness of mine.  I finished two reps shy at the 8 minute mark, posting a 70 in the scaled workout.

Delaware State Open
The tournament was nice, low key.  Staff ran it well despite a 30-minute hiccup prior to Round 1.  I tied for the U2000 prize with 3 other people, scoring 3.5 score out of 6 rounds.  This is the 4th known state where I have won a prize.

Below is my last round that catapaulted me into the four-way tie:

And this ends State No. 16 #fiftystatesofchess