Chess960 Go West: Chess960 Tournament in the Pacific Northwest
05.02.2006 - Seattle and the Pacific Northwest are known for their High-Tech scene, epitomized by Bill Gates' Microsoft, Boing's 747 jumbojet, Nirvana's grunge rock or Starbuck's coffee shops. Now some visionary chess enthusiasts proved that classical chess can be elevated to a new level - eliminating tedious opening theory preparation and re-injecting fun and creativity into the game on the 64 squares.
The 2005 version of the Washington Class
Championships drew almost 130 players to the Red Lion Inn in Bellevue,
WA over the traditional Thanksgiving weekend for six rounds of chess.
Nat Koons
It was won by Nick Raptis, a master from
Vancouver, WA. In addition we had a scholastic, one-day, five round
tourney that involved 114 children with their parents nearby. Needless
to say that the day, Friday, of our event was very busy for us.
The Chess960 event at the Washington Class Championships was a new side
event held in the evening of Friday and Saturday in the midst of the
tournament.
We obtained 8 players to participate. We would
have had a few more but the rigors of a normal tourney and family
matters caused a couple of players not to play. There were four rounds.
Our time control was game in 12 minutes with 10 seconds increments to
the end of the game. After the random drawing of the starting position
the players studied that position for four minutes and then started the
clocks.
The winner was Nat Koons, a master from
the Seattle area. We also offered a prize to the best player rated under
1900 which went to Eric Hufnagel. The tournament was not rated but
upheld all the procedures recommend by chesstigers.de. I believe that if
we try this again next year it will be with a longer time control, maybe
game in 25 minutes with 10 seconds increments
Hanniegn Pitre
At the same time there was also an eight round
blitz event which drew 14 players. This too was won by Mr. Raptis. So we
have more work to do to reach more players with this interesting variant
of chess.
I am hoping that some clubs in our area will try
Chess960 in a casual setting to see if it has the appeal that we find in
it.
The complete story of the event can be found through NorthWest Chess
magazine, which is a monthly regional magazine serving the states of
Washington and Oregon that has been continuously published over 50 years.
The website is www.nwchess.com
Here is one game played by Mr. Koons from the
event. Starting position #839 or BRKNQBRN
11/25/05 Chess960 Bellevue, WA Round 1 Nat Koons- Gene Milener
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