2009 Michigan Open Sharpener
Saturday was a heads-down invitational “2009 Michigan Open Sharpener” to tune up for this weekend's State Chess Championship in Lansing.
The format was two 90-minute games, with deep collaborative analysis of all of the games after each round. This is based on how our Ben ran his Expert Factory invitational series--a remarkable number of Ben's participants have since muscled their way over the 2000 line.
It was a full day, with the analysis sessions lasting as long as the games themselves. Grand Rapids Life Master Eric Fischvogt not only graciously emceed the post-mortems, but also won the best game prize for his round 2 win against Life Master Kevin Czuhai. Fischvogt’s round 1 loss to Lansing’s Matt Hassen was the runner up. Matt uncorked a nice combination to turn the tables on Fischvogt’s Catalan:
Black to Move
Position after 14 Nf3-e5?!
Hassen attributed his middlegame savvy here to his continuing battles on the Black side of the Catalan against Tony “The Tiger” Nichols.
Jack Emaus swept through the reserve section, scoring an unblemished 4 wins and 2 draws, facing off against some of West Michigan’s rapidly improving juniors, as well as a few invited parents and Grand Rapids Tournament Director Katy Ford.
All of the games from the Open Section and a selection of games from the Reserve can be found here:
http://www.westmichiganchess.com/Shared%20Documents/2009_2/200908michiganopensharpener.htm.
The game notes are rough, and represent what we looked at together in the collaborative post-mortems after each round. Over time, a few of the game's "authors" will put forth more polished annotations.
The USCF cross-tables can be found here.
Special thanks to Ferrysburg’s West Michigan Academy of Arts and Academics for providing the playing facilities. WMAAA is a public charter school that offers an award-winning arts and academic program for students in kindergarten through 8th Grade.