Correspondence Chess – The Road of an Electronic Knight
By James H. Sawaski
(Part 2)
‘The Real Return’
[You can read part 1 here: http://www.westmichiganchess.com/reports/Reports/SawaskiRoadOfAnElectronicKnight1.aspx - ed.]
The Golden Knights has intrigued me since I was in high school. I am a life member of USCF and every month I see that ad in ‘Chess Life’ and I am attracted to it. What is the Golden Knights exactly anyway? And why is it so appealing? If you Google it, you will be able to find some definitions. In Wikipedia it is the ‘U.S. Open Correspondence Chess Championship’ (According to FM Alex Dunne USCF Correspondence Coordinator – this is correct, but with specific reference to postal chess). That is a heck of a title! Think about that for a second! In 2004 a new tournament was created called the Electronic Knights which offers the same title, but with specific reference to email – which is no more or no less equal than a U.S. Open Championship! I saw this monthly advertisement in late 2006 and the dream started to form. Maybe, at least in my case, it should be called a fantasy? Of course, I have always dreamt about going to the OTB U.S. Open – that is a legitimate tournament that anybody can enter and stake a claim on an official U.S. title too. However, if you look at the past champions list (more Wikipedia) – names like Reshevsky, Fine, Benko, Evans, and even Fischer all pop out at you. GM Hikaru Nakamura played in the 2011 edition last summer! Good luck with winning that if your OTB rating isn’t 2500 or better. I can’t even picture myself getting the opportunity to sit down and play Nakamura – let alone beat him. Buying him a cup of coffee after camping out for months in St. Louis (If I’m extremely lucky) is about the closest I’ll ever get to a premier player like that. Okay, so that’s a pipe dream not about to come true any time soon.
Again I ask; why is the Golden/Electronic Knights so appealing and what makes me think that I, some class A player from Michigan would have a prayer at winning such a thing? I can’t speak for others, but official titles have always impressed me. The official national champion at pinochle has my full respect! (Whoever the heck that might be?) Just because the universe of players is smaller in some activities or sports, does not invalidate achievement. Olympic medalists in curling – get the same medals they give out in hockey. And quite possibly the curlers are much happier with their accomplishment because they don’t have multi-million dollar curling leagues to report to when the Olympics are over. The task for them is one of joy – not necessarily one of profession. I think this is one of the appealing factors of the Golden/Electronic Knights. Professional chess players just do not spend their time on correspondence chess. It’s awfully clear they would succeed and do rather well if they did. Yet, they don’t. As a matter of fact, I believe there are only a handful of players in chess history to ever become both, OTB and correspondence GMs. It just doesn’t happen. Why? I generally believe that the primary edge of an OTB grandmaster has to somehow deal with time – in OTB cases, fast time – correspondence, slow time. Maybe it’s more, maybe it’s talent, maybe it’s toughness, maybe knowledge base, drive, calculation – I don’t know exactly – but whatever it is, it clearly gets somewhat neutralized in a correspondence game because of the length of time the game takes. And no matter what activity we speak about, when the primary advantage of any participant is neutralized, the participants that are affected generally move on to something else they are better at – it’s simple logic really. Okay – so OTB GMs don’t generally play a lot of correspondence chess. Does that mean the Golden/Electronic Knights tournaments are worthless? ABSOLUTELY NOT! Last time I remembered, in order to win a chess tournament one must enter and participate. The Golden/Electronic Knights correspondence tournaments are legitimate U.S. Open chess titles – everyone is invited to play. If a bunch of working people are the only ones to enter and give it their all – then that’s what the championship is. I think this is my biggest fascination with the Golden/Electronic Knights – it’s generally a large group of non –professional chess players slugging it out for a real title. What does this mean? Well – whatever the true odds are no matter how bad – every participant seems to at least have some sort of shot at winning. To quote Lloyd Christmas, “So you’re telling me there’s a chance!” Isn’t that what anybody truly ever wants? A chance?
Okay, the Electronic Knights had really caught my attention and I wanted to enter. Before I did though, I wanted to see what other correspondence championships there were. Lou Owen, the highest rated correspondence chess player on record from the Upper Peninsula had won a big championship in 1992. It was called the Absolute. What is an Absolute? I did some research and learned that the Absolute is an invitation of master level correspondence players, thus a sort of closed U.S. championship. Impressively, Lou had tied for first in this tournament, but my 1478 rating at the time was hardly going to get me an invite and to be honest, I’m not sure I was ready to tangle with that quite yet anyway. I was hoping for a nice upset here and there, but not a dozen of them in a row! The Absolute was impossible to enter. Another grand slam type of correspondence championship that is sponsored by ICCF is called the United States Correspondence Chess Championship (USCCC). It did catch my eye, but then the requirements blew me away. It required a 2000 minimum correspondence rating, or a 2100 OTB rating, neither of which I had and thus my entry would not be accepted. I wasn’t really interested in the other grand slams at the time anyway. I already knew the format of the Golden/Electronic Knights was what I wanted to play and it would be plenty of food to fill my little plate. I pulled out my credit card, entered online ($25) and soon, I got an email from Alex Dunne. I was officially entered and paired in the 2007 Electronic Knights tournament section 07EN11.
The Electronic Knights is a three round tournament and has a maximum time limit of 2 ½ years per round. For all three rounds, that’s 7+ potential years! Although they seem to only go about 4-5 years, that is nothing to take lightly either. If a player completes all three rounds, they get a shiny pin. I remember really wanting one of those pins. It’d be very unlikely to win this tournament (I was still dreaming I would though! Hehe), but gaining a pin would make the endeavor a total success and I would be able to say – I at least played for the U.S. Open Correspondence Chess Championship. However, I had years to go and first things first. I had to qualify for the semifinals by getting 4.5 points or higher in the preliminaries against 6 other hungry opponents with the same dream in mind. My opponents seemed tough and a little bit scary for an initial pairing. There was a top dog 2300, a 2000, two 1900s, another 1400 and a 1200. A very wide range of opponents! How in the heck was I going to score 4.5 points? I sent my first moves out and my real comeback to correspondence chess had begun. Return moves began to fly and the first result came fast. Too fast actually, a mere two days was all it took! I am quite ashamed of it now, but my opponent was having as good of a time as I was and at least the result was in my favor.
[Here is a link to Sawaski’s 2007 Electronic Knights Preliminary Group game against Ray Niccolls-ed]
http://www.westmichiganchess.com/Shared%20Documents/Players/Sawaski/2007electronicknights.htm
The game [against Ray Niccolls] barely left the opening book. The one trap I set for my opponent, he saw and quickly blundered in a whole different direction. There is nothing pretty about this game. DO NOT play correspondence chess like this if you decide to ever join! It almost becomes like an OTB game when you move that fast and that is a good way to get beat. However, at the time I was so excited to be playing rated chess again I couldn’t help myself. Have I ever mentioned that I LOVE CHESS! I had the first win under my belt, 3.5 points to go. Could I make it into the next round?
Coming Soon – (Part 3) How Am I Going to Make It to Semi-Finals?
Author of “The Chess Team” http://www.amazon.com/Chess-Team-Novel-James-Sawaski/dp/0595346308/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256154305&sr=8-1
