Four Days Until Tulsa

Four more days until the first-ever U.S. Championship Qualifier!

This morning I checked out the advance entries (as of last Wednesday). There are 87 people on the list, plus two possibles. Surprisingly, there are only 7 grandmasters entered, and 12 international masters. With 7 slots available for the U.S. championship, I would say this creates a pretty good opportunity for an IM or another dark horse to qualify.

I’m number 59 on the list, and it looks as if I will be paired against someone rated in the 2425-2450 range in the first round. Of course the pairings could change because of late entries, but if it were just based on the advance entries list, I would be paired against IM Michael Brooks (2435) of Missouri. Just below him is FM Ray Robson (2427), who is one of the super youngsters in U.S. chess. I would love to add him to the list of prodigies I have faced (and sometimes beaten).

Random facts:

ChessLecture fans can root for Eugene Perelshteyn (the top seed!), Jesse Kraai (#7 seed), and former ChessLecturer Josh Friedel (#9 seed), in addition to yours truly.

Fans of this blog should also root for Andres Hortillosa, who is the #77 seed. I’m looking forward to meeting one of my blog readers for the first time! Interestingly, based on the advance entries Andres would be paired against Michael Aigner, a well-known chess trainer here in Northern California who has also visited this blog at least once. Michael has a huge positive score against me, so Andres, you’d better be careful.

California has the second-most entries of any state, with 12. Texas has the most, with 17. But in terms of quality, California leads the pack with 8 players over 2200 to Texas’s 5. By comparison, New York has only 5 players total, with 4 over 2200.

I haven’t done anything too special to prepare for the tournament. I did meet with a master friend of mine last night, and we went over a line that I’m thinking about playing as Black against 1. d4. (I won’t say anything more because I don’t want to give my opponents any hints.) But in general, I think that preparing a bunch of openings at the last minute is a terrible idea. The games will almost surely be decided in the later stages.

My main preparation, in fact, was buying a new chess clock! My old Saitek clock does not have a setting for the FIDE-style time control at this event, which allows you to accumulate time (30 seconds per move). So I shopped online and decided to buy a new Excalibur Game Timer 2. The consensus on the Internet seems to be that they are flimsier than the main alternative, the Chronos, but I’m not planning to subject it to a lot of wear and tear.

One of my chief concerns is that I will be playing with a 30-second time delay for the first time ever. It poses real questions of strategy. Some players in the U.S. Chess League are used to “living off the time delay” — that is, running their clocks down until they have less than a minute left, and then playing the rest of the game at a move-every-30-seconds tempo. I’m hoping to avoid that kind of time pressure. If I have to play blitz chess with these guys, at least while the position is still complicated, they’ll eat my lunch.

Dana’s Fearless Predictions: The winning score will be 5.5 out of 7, because anybody who goes into the last round at 5/6 will take a quick draw in order to clinch a qualifying spot. The seven qualifiers will include four grandmasters, two international masters, and one FIDE master or untitled player; two ChessLecturers; and two California players.

I definitely plan to update this blog from Tulsa every day, so keep posted, beginning on Friday! As far as I can tell, live coverage of this event will not be available at www.monroi.com. So this blog may be the first place to look for news!