2002-09-01 - 11:13 p.m.

New York State Championship, Day 2

Yesterday was a pretty good day, I drew a master and a near-master. Well, today was a bad day. I got my ass kicked.

Probably the reason I played so poorly was something I did in the morning. It's what you would call a "strategic error."

I got out of bed at about 9:15 and then took a shower. While in the shower, I remembered that there was a meeting of the New York State Association this morning, and I am a voting member so I really should attend. In fact, the meeting had started at 9 a.m. so I was already 20 minutes late.

My figuring was that I would go to the meeting, and then get myself some breakfast. The round didn't start until noon - that should be plenty of time, right?

Wrong.

I may have said this before, but there are many people who find politics boring, the clash of egos that are hidden under the guise of "issues." I know that most people also find chess boring, just sitting there for hours on end, brooding. Well, chess politics manages to mix the worst of both worlds, being at the same time rather dry, boring, somewhat depressing, and yet you will also find people lying and cheating and scheming for pennies, sometimes literally. O what fools these mortals be!

Actually, I'm being unkind. There were some items of interest at the meeting, for instance the notion of the "ideal" tournament site. Nearly any large tournament has to be held at a large hotel or convention center, and essential to the organizer is having lots of "room nights," i.e.: people playing in the tournament who are actually paying money to stay at the site. The key notion is that you want to have the site close enough to a large population center (like New York City) so that you attract people from it, but not SO close that people choose to just commute to the tournament site from their homes.

So, as far as the New York State Championship goes, it should probably be no closer to New York than Kingston, but no farther away than Saratoga Springs.

Isn't logic a wonderful thing? It's all about the money, folks!

I'm sure I would have found all of this very interesting if my blood sugar hadn't been crashing. While people were droning on about various chess issues, I kept looking at my watch, feeling like a cranky gorilla with hemorrhoids. At first I decided that I was leaving at 10:15, then 10:30, and then 11:00 and finally at 11:25 I just couldn't take it any more and just got up and left. I think the meeting must have broken up a few minutes after than anyway.

This was not good - any decent place to eat near the hotel was 10 or 15 minutes away so I was practically late already. I was seething.

Ordinarily what I would do in a situation like that is eat breakfast at the hotel, which is generally kind of expensive. However, in this case the hotel restaurant didn�t seem to be open. What sort of place IS this, anyway???

So I drove into town, feeling half-crazed. The local diners seemed to be packed, so I was forced to keep driving to the nearest large town, in this case Ellenville. There was a McDonald's and a Burger King there, and fast food is exactly what I needed.

In the state I was in everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. I was stuck behind a procession of motorcycles that was going well under the speed limit, as I kept frantically looking at the clock.

Finally the McDonalds appeared, so I decided that was where I would go. Then the procession of motorcycles pulled in there too. Great! However, I managed to park my car and get into the restaurant before the horde of bikers.

Have I mentioned that I hate McDonalds? I don't like their image, I don't like their politics, I find their restaurants dehumanizing, oppressive, depressing, and I especially don't like their food. You can bet that I was feeling very angry about being forced to eat there by circumstances.

After wolfing down my tasteless meal I jumped back into my car, already late for my game. I walked into the tournament room over 40 minutes late - and this was 40 minutes I really couldn't afford to lose.

So, as you can see, I was perhaps not in the best frame of mind to spend a couple of hour pushing around little plastic pieces.

Round Three: Champion's Brother (2130) vs. Uberhamster (1930)

My opponent for this round was the younger brother of a very strong player who was U.S. Junior champion a couple of years ago. He obviously wasn't nearly as promising as his International Master brother, but he was plenty strong enough to throttle frazzled Mr. Hamster.

He played an opening that was a little offbeat, and I remembered it only vaguely. I knew what I SHOULDN'T play against it, but I just couldn't remember what I SHOULD play. I wound up getting a slight disadvantage, but I had the feeling if my opponent had played a little more sharply he could have racked me up pretty early on. As the game progressed, things improved a little, and I thought I was equal. However, as we approached the time control and my time started to dwindle my position became a little difficult, and when I missed a subtlety he was all over me like white on rice. I resigned before he could mate me.

After the round was over I unwound for a little while, then went to get some lunch. Or dinner. Or whatever.

This time I went to one of the local diners that I'd had to pass up on my frantic rush to McDonalds. I admit that I had been expecting it to be rather like the diners around Frown Town, but it was a lot smaller and a lot shabbier. It didn't make me feel any better when my rather harried looking waitress told me that I should be patient because their cook had just quit this morning.

Great. This news definitely dimmed my spirit of culinary adventure. However, as I found out not even a substitute cook can mess up a simple turkey club sandwich.

Just as I was finishing up my meal several of the players that I knew who came from my area wandered in for lunch. They invited me to join them, and we had a pleasant conversation.

Round Four: Uberhamster (1930) vs. Mr. Nervous (2090)

Having lost my last game, I slipped down the pole a bit and now was playing someone rated under 2100. I recognized the fellow's name, but had never actually met him in person before.

This game was actually a dismal affair, in fact I would say that it may be my worst game of the six I played down in Kerhonkson.

My opponent, playing black, played a somewhat obscure variation of the Sicilian Defense (starting to sound familiar?) and I couldn't quite remember what to play, so I used a variation from a similar line in the Sicilian, which, as it turned out, was exactly what I was supposed NOT to do. So, I wound up falling into an opening trap and losing a pawn JUST LIKE I DID IN THE GAME I PLAYED LAST NIGHT!!

While I was able to compensate for my bad opening play the night before, this time my opponent was having none of it. He played carefully, short circuiting any of my attacking chances before I could build up any serious pressure.

He also played rather annoyingly as well. I was using up tons of thinking time as usual, to try to extricate myself from the mess I had gotten myself into. He, on the other hand, was using up very little time, and he would thwack down the move with the authority of someone who had just found the cure for cancer. Then he would immediately get up from the board and go wandering around, leaving me to stew in my own juices.

To be fair, I think the guy was going over to check out the action on another board where his daughter was playing. Something I forgot to mention previously was that there seemed to be a goodly number of young female players in the Open section. In fact, the first three rounds there were female players on either side of me, which is something I can hardly ever remember occurring. Of course now I was playing in the basement, and most of them were playing closer to the front of the room than I was. None of them were terribly strong, in fact they all seemed to be about my rating, but they all seemed to be doing better than me.

Meanwhile, in my game I kept trying to push for an advantage, and was getting nowhere. The problem with being a pawn down is that your opponent can play aggressively and you generally don't want to trade off his attacking pieces because every exchange brings you closer to a lost pawn ending. However, finally he got me. He was going to win another pawn, but then I got an attacking idea which looked good on the surface, but cost me a piece a bit later on. Game over.

So today I was zero for two. Lovely.

Disgusted with myself I went for a drive, and found an ice cream place and got myself a cone. For some reason it didn't taste so good, so I wound up throwing most of it away. I also filled the car up with gas for a quicker getaway tomorrow. I thought I was being clever, but as it turns out I had ample opportunity to fill it up the next day.

Score at the end of day two: one out of four.

Tournament leaders: GM Joel Benjamin, GM Alexander Stripunsky, GM Ildar Ibragimov, and GM Leonid Yudasin, all with 3 1/2 out of 4.