The 11th Annual Foxwoods Open got underway on Wednesday with over 120 players competing in the 9 round Open Section. This year’s event is a tough competition with 14 GMs, 14 IMs, 22 FMs, 3 WIMs and 1 WFM, a total of over 50 titled players, among the list of competitors battling it out for the biggest money on offer (at least $70,000) in the chess world over the Easter weekend.
Here at the Foxwoods Casino Resort, it is getting harder and harder to navigate the boundaries of chess and poker as most of the top players in the tournament can all be heard whispering about how good or bad they are doing at the tables. In fact, on the first day of the event a World Poker Tour event was wrapping up it’s final day up in the Grand Ballroom, which is were the chess tournament is located from round 3 onwards, or the entire events for those in the Under 2100 section or below.
To concentrate more on the chess tournament, the Foxwoods Open serves as a different type of event from the usual major weekend swisses across the country as it is 9 rounds and, much to the liking of many players, there is only one possible schedule. This means that all the players get to play all 9 rounds together and also that players cannot come sneaking into the top of the standings in later rounds by virtue of some quick games.
Another benefit to all the strong players being available to everyone for the whole event is for norm purposes. Inevitably, players get a crack at picking off a strong player or two and, more importantly, the chance of scoring a GM or IM norm. The only sad news on the norm front for this year’s event is that we are a couple of titled foreign players short of using the “foreign waiver” rule. This means all Americans will need to play at least 4 foreign players.
After 2 rounds of play, 21 players still have a perfect score. Amongst them are some players you may have heard of before such as GMs Nakamura, Van Wely, Shulman, Becerra, Akobian, Ehlvest, Shabalov, Sadvakasov, Perelshteyn, Ivanov, Yermolinsky, Friedel and Charbonneau. In fact the only GM not on a perfect score is GM Giorgi Kacheishvili who now has to play a “Swiss Gambit” after giving up a half-point to Canadian FM Michael Dougherty in round 1.
Also included in the group is IM Robert Hess. Hess was the joint winner at Foxwoods last year, securing his first GM norm. He recently scored his 2nd GM norm at the Texas Tech Invitational, which also put his rating above the required 2500 FIDE mark. Will he complete the Foxwoods circle at this event and get his 3rd and final norm? It would be great if he could, made even more special by the fact that all his norms would have been scored on American soil, something that most don’t think is possible.
The lowest rated player on 2 points is young FM Darwin Yang. Yang has proved himself more than worthy of the FM title that was bestowed upon him at a world youth tournament some time ago and in round 2 he scored one of very few upsets so far, beating seasoned IM Bryan Smith. His reward being a drop down to the next score group in round 3 to play Kacheishvili. At least he’s foreign.
There was a lot of interesting action over both the initial rounds but unfortunately it seems I don’t have that particular stuff in the tournament database yet. Hopefully that little problem will be solved soon. However, I will leave this particular report with the following neat finish from Varuzhan Akobian in round 1.
Varuzhan Akobian-Jonathan Hilton, Round 1
Position after 22…Bc8
Here Akobian finished off the game in style with 23.Qxf6! exf6 24.e7+ Kh8 25.exd8(Q) 1-0. For more on this game please see Jonathan’ own blog at Chess Life Online.
Keep tuned to www.foxwoodsopen.com for live games and more reports over the next few days.
Glad to see an improved website. Looking forward to seeing more results.
I thought that to obtain a norm one must play players from 4 federations. Thus, an American would only need to play 3 foreign players to secure a norm. Am I mistaken?