2002-09-02 - 11:49 p.m.

New York State Championship, Day 3

For the first two days the New York State Championship is run on a "B" person's schedule. The first round of the day is at noon, and the second is at 6:30 p.m. However, on the last day the timing abruptly shifts: the first round begins at 9 a.m. and the final round starts at 3:30 p.m. The idea is that people will be able to finish their last game and get started for home at a reasonable hour. However, this schedule shift is a little jarring making Monday "a triple espresso day" in the words of one of the players.

Having no clock radio in my room, I got a wakeup call from the desk at 7 a.m. I felt that two hours was plenty of time to get packed, get out and get breakfast. My only worry was that the desk wouldn't make the call since the services at this hotel were inconsistent in the extreme. In spite of my misgivings I was awakened at 7 a.m. with no problems. However, as it turns out other people weren't so lucky.

I showered, got everything together and brought it all out to the car in jig time, leaving me over an hour for a nice leisurely breakfast. My choice this morning was yet another of the diners in the area which seemed, like the others, small and dingy. Nothing the matter with the food, though.

Here I was, all packed and ready to leave, and I hadn't really explored the hotel much at all. It supposedly was a resort and spa, but I hadn't checked out any of it. Part of it was the weather. From what I saw the swimming pool looked nice, but the weather all weekend had been chilly and rainy, so swimming seemed unattractive. Well, that's basically an excuse. Weekends where I go to tournaments are like this: eat, play, eat, play, sleep, eat, play, eat, etc. Generally there is not much time for extracurricular activity, especially when you use as much thinking time as Mr. Hamster. Dreadfully dull, I know. If Lily were with me, I think she would have been bored to tears. Modern hotels have internet hookups in their rooms, while in THIS place you were lucky if you could find a place to plug in your electric razor!

When I returned from breakfast and went into the tournament directors room, everything was in a hubbub. The room was open, but the directors themselves were nowhere to be seen. The rumor was that they'd never gotten their wakeup call. So it was ten minutes until the start of the fifth round and there were no pairings posted.

And there was another problem.

Overnight the tournament directors had locked the directors' room. In it were their computers, printers, the books and chess paraphernalia of the chess bookstore and the New York State Championship trophies. Apparently someone, somehow, had gotten into the room and stolen the trophies.

Basically there were two trophies, the Genesee Cup team trophy and the State Championship trophy proper. The silver cup on top of the championship trophy had been unscrewed and carted off, and the Genesee cup was just gone. While these trophies were not terribly valuable in and of themselves even though they were made of silver, what they represented was almost priceless. In fact, the information on the Genesee Cup, listing the winning teams from the last twenty years may be irreplaceable. It looks like it's going to be Mr. Hamster's job to try to find out what had been engraved on the missing cup. Research, ho!

In a sharp bit of irony, last night I had taken the time to copy down what was written on the Championship trophy, listing New York State champions going all the way back to 1878. That is, essentially, the definitive list of New York State Champions. I considered copying down what was on the Genesee Cup, but figured that I could do it the following day. Alas, if I had only known.

My feeling was that one of the hotel employees had boosted it. Who else had a key to the room? Who else had the tools to unscrew the trophy from its base? And even if they DIDN'T steal the trophy the hotel was STILL responsible because they just unlocked the room with no person of authority present.

Later in the day, people started thinking that the theft was just some kids playing a prank. After all, why steal the trophies when there was far more useful and valuable stuff to steal, like the directors' laptops and printers, or all the merchandise at the chess bookstore? None of these other things were touched.

Regardless of who took the trophies, I felt that far too little was being made of their theft. If I was one of the directors or a state association officer I'd be raising the roof, calling the cops, etc. Everybody else seemed to be taking this in stride, and get this: the State Championship is going to be held in the same hotel next year! Hopefully by then we'll have a new trophy for them to steal.

Oh yeah, chess.

Round Five: Tea-Loving Kid (1920) vs. Uberhamster (1930)

With only one point out of four I was in the cellar, playing on the second-to-last board, sitting on the opposite end of the room from where all the grandmasters were playing. In fact, I had fallen so low I was now playing someone rated LOWER than me, and a kid to boot.

I don't like playing kids, generally. If you beat them, you look like some sort of bully, and if they beat you, you look like a big old chump. It's a no-win situation.

My opponent was a boy of about eleven with an Armenian-sounding last name. Throughout the game his mother was hovering solicitously over the board, bringing him little bottles of tea. Hey, where's MY second?? I want some tea, too!

And as for the game - well, he needed the tea. In fact a bottle of Jolt Cola and a shot of whiskey might have done him some good too. It was a crazy slugfest, very, very complicated.

With me playing black we headed into one of my favorite variations - then at a crucial juncture, he varied. I had an opportunity to take a pawn with check, but should I do it? After thinking about it for a while I decided it was too unsafe - taking that pawn is a no-no in the main line of the variation and I figured that was the case here, too.

The line we were playing involved me sacrificing a pawn for a dynamic position and stranding his king in the middle for a while. Like I said, it's a crazy, crazy line. Only nutty people play it. I should know.

Anyway, we wound up in a position very much like the main line, but his king's knight was in a different place than usual. Was this better, or worse than the other variation? Yarrrghx! Who can tell??

He started advancing his kingside pawns, and this could mean trouble since one of his pawns was passed, that is, a potential queen. I thought his advance was premature, so I put my rook in the middle of his pawns to screw them up. However, I underestimated how quickly he could develop and he soon had my rook trapped. Just as he was about to capture it I opened up the center by sacrificing more pawns. Suddenly his disorganized army was faced with all my pieces charging at his king. The only way for him to defend himself was to retreat, and put his pieces on bad squares. I then found a move that I was really proud of, and it knocked him for a loop. He then spent nearly an hour thinking about his next four moves. There was no way he could stop me from winning a piece.

The position was still very complicated, and it had cost me some pawns to get it, but I had the initiative and a piece, which is nothing to sneeze at. However, I then stupidly thought for 14 minutes on my 25th move, leaving me with just three minutes to get to move forty. Yes folks, it was crunch time.

Playing at top speed I repeated the position a couple of times, and while he was thinking about his move I thought I found a winning method. The pieces started to fly. I had flushed his king out to the middle of the board, but I had less than a minute left. I checked him with my queen, and he abruptly stopped the clock. Was he resigning? No, he said, it's checkmate.

Well so it is! How about that! Mr. Hamster finally wins one!

We retreated to the directors room and looked at the game for a while, and we seemed to find a winning method for him, where he actually did get to win my wayward rook. Well, it was very complicated and we could have looked at the game for hours.

After that it was time for lunch, and since one of the other players from my area had just finished his game, he invited me to join him.

This fellow, whose name was Steve, has been playing chess in our area ever since I remember. At one time he was rated over 2,300 and was just about the best player in our area. Then he went inactive, got a job, got married and so on. Recently he had been getting back into playing, but in the interim his rating had fallen below 2150. It's hard to maintain a rating that high when you're not really focusing on chess.

One thing about this guy - he had time problems that made me look like Peter Punctual. Nearly all of his games ended in fearful time scrambles, but for all that he is one of the few players in my area that has a perfect record against me. I've never even managed to draw him.

As far as I can recollect this was the longest conversation I've ever had with him. We just have never been alone together that often. While we were waiting for our food we discussed the sad state of chess in Albany. Once upon a time Albany had the best chess club in the area with most of the strong players, but a lot of those players have moved out of the area or become inactive. Due to a dispute the club lost its site last year, and they still have not found a new one. This is not a good thing. If a site isn't found soon the remaining members may just wander off.

He talked about some of the Albany players I hadn't seen in a while, and nearly all of them were sad stories. One guy had lost his high-paying job and hadn't been able to find a new one, his financial situation becoming increasingly desperate and he was forced to take a series of hand-to-mouth jobs. Another fellow had his wife die unexpectedly, killed by a hospital bungle. He kept on going with his life as if nothing had gone wrong, until he practically passed out from the grief and the strain. There were a couple of mental casualties, people who just became too nervous to play.

We didn't mean for it to happen, but it was a very sobering conversation. All of these smart young guys who loved playing chess were now battered and confused middle age men, struck down by one piece of bad luck or another.

That's the thing about life: nobody gets out alive.

I could almost count myself as one of these casualties, what with my diabetes and my parents dying within a few years of each other. However, I plan to be taking steps to improve my situation in the near future.

After lunch we headed back to the tournament site, and the final round.

Round Six: Uberhamster (1930) vs. God's Little Joke (2025)

Thanks to my win in the last round, I was now playing someone rated higher than me again. It also occurred to me that I was in sight of my goal: I wanted to get three points out of six, and all I had to do was win this last game.

My opponent's name sounded vaguely familiar, but I didn't realize who he was until he came and sat down across from me. Oh my God! It was the NINE YEAR OLD EXPERT that I had talked about previously. Talk about poetic justice! I was going to get smacked by an enfant terrible that I had dissed in my diary.

Even though his picture had been on the cover of the most recent issue of Empire Chess it still took me a minute to recognize him. I didn't expect him to be three feet tall! If you had told me he was six, I'd have believed you. He was a tiny little bespectacled marionette. I'm playing Pinocchio! Paging Walt Disney!

Playing black, he chose a somewhat unusual variation that was supposed to be no trouble for white, but after a few moves I was all at sea and using a lot of time. I really had no idea of how to proceed. I wandered into a line that seemed to be slightly disadvantageous to me.

On the other hand my opponent was playing as fast as lightning. At move 20 I had used an hour and a half while he had used just thirteen minutes. Little genius or not, he was playing just too fast. A look at the game when I got home confirmed this - he was missing all sorts of stuff. Of course I was missing even more, mainly because by this point I was a mental wreck. Ah, the confidence of youth! Well I know that in time life will show him all the mistakes he can make.

I was fighting for equality, but I made a mistake that eventually wound up costing me two pieces for a rook. The win was a matter of technique for him, but I kept trying to cause trouble. I was probably already lost when I made another mistake that lost a rook for a bishop. Say goodnight, Gracie.

And this ended this year's New York State Championship, at least for me. Because my tiny opponent was such a speed demon I had time for a leisurely dinner while waiting for the rest of the games to finish. I headed into Ellenville to see if I could find someplace new and different to eat.

I had just passed through the middle of town when I spotted a Chinese restaurant called "Shanghai Red." Since less than a week ago I had put my beloved Lily on a plane to Shanghai, I figured this was some sort of sign so I stopped immediately. There were almost no cars in the parking lot, but the place was indeed open. It was a pretty large restaurant, done up in the usual kitschy Chinese gold and red. It was dusty and mainly deserted, like just about everything else I'd seen in this part of the world.

I sat at a table and gave the waitress my order. She seemed nice, but she kept forgetting stuff.

I was looking idly out the window at the gray skies overhead. I happened to notice that there was a little vase of plastic flowers on the table, but when I saw what they were I very nearly burst into tears. They were lilies! In fact, they were identical to some artificial lilies that I had given Lily shortly after we met for the first time. Looking at those silly silk-and-plastic flowers gave me a terrible pang of longing for my sweetheart. It was a tender, but eerie coincidence.

Well, whatever had led me to that restaurant didn't steer me wrong: they had some very good Moo Shu Chicken. After eating my food and overtipping my silly, forgetful waitress, I headed back to the tournament.

When I got back there were still several games going, so I busied myself with reading a book, occasionally looking in on the remaining players. One of the last games to finish was that of my friendly rival Jim, the current Frown Town Chess Club Champion. He had an excruciating endgame to work his way through, but he eventually won, finishing the tournament with 2 1/2 point to my 2. In round five I had been on the second-to-last board while he had been playing on the last one.

This was a very tough event, and to show how difficult it was: I managed to gain a few rating points, in spite of my dismal 2-4 record.

The tournament itself finished in a four way tie at 5-1 among grandmasters Joel Benjamin, Alexander Stripunsky, and Michael Rohde, along with untitled Aaron Pixton. This last player was the surprise of the event: just sixteen years old and in order to make it to the winner's circle he had to defeat a former World Championship Candidate, a very strong grandmaster. Not too shabby!

Very unusual was the fact that the top four boards all had decisive results. Usually at events like this strong players will take a short draw in the last round and just split the prize money. I was definitely looking forward to going over those games when I got home.

Finally, the last game finished and I had the crosstables and all of the games boxed up and ready to go. There was only one question: who was the New York State Champion? Technically it was a four way tie since all of the players who had scored 5-1 were New York State residents. However, one of the organizers argued that four was too many co-champions to have, so they should use a tiebreak system. In that case, GM Benjamin would be sole winner, due to the fact he'd had a slightly tougher playing schedule than the other three. The other director thought that there was nothing wrong with four co-champions; after all, hadn't there been three last year? If three is okay, why not four?

I was ready to leave, and I asked them what the final decision was. They both sort of blinked at me owlishly. Obviously this was going to take a lot of discussion, and I didn't intend to stick around for it. It was almost ten o'clock, and long past time to head home.

Mr. Hamster was very naughty on the ride home, probably going faster than he should have most of the way. It took exactly one hour twenty-two minutes to get home to the Hamster Palace.

When I finally got home, I had a pleasant, but frustrating surprise waiting for me. I had an Instant Message and a message on my answering machine from Lily! Apparently she had gotten to China without incident, and was having a fine time. What a relief! I was really starting to get worried.

What was frustrating about this was that according to the timestamp on the Instant Message, she had signed off four minutes before I got home. Curses!

I have some conclusions about my experience this weekend, but I will save them for tomorrow, this entry has gone on long enough.

Final Score: Uberhamster 2 (out of six), tied for 41st place

Tournament Winners: GM Joel Benjamin, GM Alexander Stripunsky, GM Michael Rohde and SM Aaron Pixton, 5 (out of six).