For most of my travels in South Dakota, please see the previous post where I covered North Dakota non-chess items as well. We're going to cover in this post the tournament, & last minute sightseeing on that Monday before I traveled home.
The Paul Salem Sioux Falls Open was run pretty well. The first round was delayed 15 minutes due to a few late registrants, but nothing terrible.
In this tournament, there was an unusual way for reporting results that I had never seen before in any of the previous 33 states. It was so unusual I had to take a few pictures of it.
So, the players have to fill out the information on the card - names, round, section, & result. The cards had different colors for each section. Players submit this along with one of the copies of the scoresheet to the director. Of all the tournaments I have played in over the previous 33 states, only the US Amateur Team East has a separate reporting card, & no other individual tournament has a separate result card that I can recall. It's an interesting attempt to have backup to illegible scoresheets in order to verify results entered in the chess tournament computer files. We'll see if other states have this, but if other states have this, please let me know & I will update this stat.
So, in Idaho 2022, I saw one of my opponents from a previous tournament, Eric Hon (Utah 2014). I played against Todd Wolf (US Open 2016 in Indiana) North Dakota the previous weekend. Here in South Dakota, I saw three famous people - Dane Zagar, organizer of the 2022 US Amateur North in Minnesota where the Masters was a side event; GM Fidel Corrales Jimenez, who I played in Idaho in Round 2, & Megan Chen, another chess player featured earlier this year in Chess Life as she also tries to play chess in every state in this country! South Dakota is her 44th state, so I wish her luck in her quest as she will likely finish her 50th state before I do.
I didn't do very well in this tournament. In fact, I did the opposite - fail to record a win for the second state in my career (Maryland). I finished with two losses & two draws (had a 2nd round full point bye), making this the third state (Pennsylvania, New York) with a multiple game deficit under .500. I guess I will have to come back to try to even this out.
I hallucinated a position in Round 1, dropping a piece cleanly for nothing, which turned into an exchange-down ending I could do nothing in. I got the full point bye in Round 2, & then I ended up facing Megan in Round 3
After the game, Megan & I got together for a quick picture & had a brief conversation (it was already 10pm CDT after we finished) about our respective journeys & states left.
In Round 4, I faced a player who was apparently well known for time trouble (he admitted it after the game). At least three times, he made a move & then waited several minutes until he punched the clock. (To non-chess tournament players, if your move doesn't create checkmate, stalemate, or an immediate draw based on insufficient material left on both sides (e.g. King vs King), you must complete your move by punching the clock, which is the act of stopping your clock & starting your opponent's clock simultaneously.) The game went back & forth a few times, & we both executed beautiful knight sacrifices in the game. Unfortunately, he did checkmate me on Move 51, so I jokingly said, "You don't have to punch the clock now."
In Round 5, I used an exchange variation of the Ruy Lopez on my opponent, but he correctly traded his Bishop for my Knight & I couldn't find a win in the King & pawn ending. Bonus sign this tournament wasn't going well for me - My 4th round opponent lost his 5th round game in 5 moves. (1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. e5 Bf5 4. h4 e6?? 5. g4 & he resigned as the Bishop is trapped.)
In an unusual move, my flight departing Sioux Falls didn't board until 10:32 am CDT or something like that. Since I solved my North Dakota trophy problem by successfully playing tetris with my carryon the night before, I had a little bit of extra time to go for last minute sightseeing. I tried look at some sculptures along sculpturewalk, & I checked out Arc of Dreams. I also found primary & secondary truck route signs that I had never seen before. You may check out these pictures Part 1 & Part 2 of my last minute sightseeing.
So, despite the lack of performance in South Dakota, overall, this was a very fun 10-11 day trip, I won a little money & a trophy, & I made a few new friends.
Here is the combined map, simplified to try to use the 6 Toad colors from Super Mario Run mobile game (or to try to use the primary & secondary colors)
And that concludes State No. 34 for #fiftystatesofchess
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