Sunday, June 10, 2007
Just got back from the After Memorial Open and it was a great tournament with lots of great chess being played by all. As a little background on the event here are the stats on the tournament. First it was played in Orlando Florida at the North Hilton. It was a five round tournament played with a game in 120 minutes. There were only three sections, but for this size tournament I believe that was just about perfect. We had an open section, an U1800 section, and a scholastics section. There was approximately 105 people that participated in this tournament.
This tournament was run very smoothly with all the rounds starting right on time. Anyone that's been to a poorly run one can appreciate just how important it is to have a competent TD running the show. Now this tournament was not completely void of interruptions. We had some weird things happen that I've never seen or experienced at a tournament before. First let's start with lights just falling out of the ceiling for no apparent reason. For your enjoyment I took a picture of one of the lights ominously hanging above some participants heads as they played the game. We also had to contend with in a bumbling staff attempting to fix the lights while a round was being played. That TD had to intervene and stop the maintenance person from screaming for assistance with his 12ft. ladder. All of this was trumped by the most bizarre thing I've ever experienced during a tournament. During the fourth round of a fire alarm went off not once but three times. We had to stop our games and evacuate the playing hall.
I unfortunately did not play well at this event. I scored two wins and three losses and my rating dropped by about seventeen points. I went into the tournament rated 1553 and knew that my level of competition would be stronger than anything I've ever faced before. With this in mind the results are not too surprising considering the lowest person that beat me out rated me by 150 points.
Please enjoy the pictures from the tournament below:
The empty hall
The falling light!
This tournament was run very smoothly with all the rounds starting right on time. Anyone that's been to a poorly run one can appreciate just how important it is to have a competent TD running the show. Now this tournament was not completely void of interruptions. We had some weird things happen that I've never seen or experienced at a tournament before. First let's start with lights just falling out of the ceiling for no apparent reason. For your enjoyment I took a picture of one of the lights ominously hanging above some participants heads as they played the game. We also had to contend with in a bumbling staff attempting to fix the lights while a round was being played. That TD had to intervene and stop the maintenance person from screaming for assistance with his 12ft. ladder. All of this was trumped by the most bizarre thing I've ever experienced during a tournament. During the fourth round of a fire alarm went off not once but three times. We had to stop our games and evacuate the playing hall.
I unfortunately did not play well at this event. I scored two wins and three losses and my rating dropped by about seventeen points. I went into the tournament rated 1553 and knew that my level of competition would be stronger than anything I've ever faced before. With this in mind the results are not too surprising considering the lowest person that beat me out rated me by 150 points.
Please enjoy the pictures from the tournament below:
The empty hall
The falling light!
posted by John Evans at 12:46 PM
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