FollowI participated in the National Open chess tournament in Las Vegas, part of the International Chess Festival. It’s billed as the chess vacation of the year (if you consider playing chess for 7 or 8 hours a day a vacation). There were just over 1000 players in 8 sections. You can find the festival website here.
I finished with 4 points out of 7 in my weight-class, the Under 2100 section: 3 wins, 2 draws, and 2 losses. One of these days I’ll play in the open section, which will give me the opportunity to play the strongest international players and lose big. This year’s open section was won by Viktor Matviishen from Ukraine, Bilel Bellahcene from Algeria, and Jianchao Zhou from Massachusetts, each of whom finished with 7 out of 9 points.
The high points of the festival were the organization of the tournament with its competent, knowledgeable staff. The rounds were mostly on time, participants were wanded when they returned to the hall from the bathroom, the organizers used text messaging to arrange the round pairing to avoid the inevitable traffic jam in front of wall postings. The prize fund is also nothing to sneeze at and brings players from all over the world. There were plenty of side events for those with the energy after you’ve got the energy after playing classical games twice a day. In the simultaneous exhibition I managed to draw the legendary Ben Finegold.
I’m in the hoodie
The travelling bookstore was another gem, loaded with bargain books, fancy and not so fancy chess sets, and other merch (bags, boards, and for some reason, chess neckties). The bookstore folks would also help you set your clock if you are tech-challenged and they offered a $50 gift certificate to any player ending the tournament with a positive score.
There were lots of lectures, blitz side-tournaments, opportunities for game review and to meet streamers and chess influencers (yep, it’s a thing). I got to chat with Susan Polgar, former world women’s champion and author of Rebel Queen. You can find my review here:
Shaking hands with Susan Polgar
The venue is goodish. The Flamingo Hotel (think Bugsy Seigel) is convenient, has responsive, knowledgeable staff, and is reasonable (for Las Vegas). There are no coffeemakers in the rooms, so they force you to forage for coffee at exorbitant prices. And the hotel seems to have no control over the temperature: it was consistently 55-65 degrees inside and that meant you were playing in a meat locker. I felt especially bad for the chess office staff who were shivering in the coldest part of the hall. (Space heaters next time, folks!).
The chess parents set up ramshackle camps in the hallways, cheerfully ignoring the hotel’s injunction not to bring in outside food. The parents ranged from supportive to tolerant to overbearing: my favorite was a woman who had a tee-shirt proclaiming MOTHER OF NERDS. Well played.
I got a chance to chat with Oregon State Champion Zoey Tang, who writes for the American Chess Magazine.
Selfie with Zoey Tang
You can learn more about Zoey here:
And in the interests of ending on a positive note, I won’t mention the flight delay leaving Las Vegas that caused us to miss our San Diego to Medford connection BY FOUR MINUTES. The only time trouble in the entire event.
