Plenty of strong players came out for the Gold Section of our November 5 Tri-Level G/45. Four rounds later, Illinois had two new experts: Christopher Girardo and Thomas Kaczynski. The clear winner of the event with 3.5/4 was Abe Sun, a youth player who gained over 100 rating points and is closing in on the 2000 mark himself. Girardo, Kaczynski and NM Jon Burgess tied for second place with 3.0/4.0 each. Special thanks go to our guest master FM Kevin Bachler, who came out to play his first regular rated games in six years. It’s great to have the Caveman back at the board.

Five players led the Silver Section with 3.0/4.0 performances. Julien Bendelac and David Sye each had two wins and two draws, and picked up almost 100 rating points for their day’s work. Adem Music and Frank Lasch also scored 3.0/4.0 and played up a section for one round. Rahul Dhiman was our other 3.0 scorer.

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Jon Burgess and Christopher Girardo each scored a perfect 3-0 to land at the top of the standings at the 3x3 tournament on September 10. Sadly, our chess day was not long enough to allow for four rounds, which might have yielded a clear winner in the Gold Section field of 14.

Four players went 2/3 in a closely matched Silver section: Abdulah Prijic, Edward Bustamente, Rahul Dhiman and Ricky Wang.

In the Bronze section, Douglas Selph and Aman Grover went 3-0. This was Selph's rookie tournament, and his perfect score gave him a provisional rating of 1519.

Crosstables

by Maret

It's been our pleasure at the Evanston Chess Club to play a couple of simuls against NM Jon Burgess. The simuls were a lot of fun, but the games we played left some of us asking, "How can I play better chess against stronger players?"

So we asked Jon to talk to us about how to improve our games and be more effective when we play up. The result was a lecture given on February 22, 2011, which featured three games in which David beats Goliath: Burgess-Shulman (2004 Chicago Open), Magness-Villarreal (2009 Greater Peoria Open) and Hart-Weber (2011 USAT-North). To read the notes and analysis, visit: Burgess Lecture on il-chess.org

Thanks to Jon for both the lecture and for providing the materials.

by Maret