2003-02-16 - 11:37 p.m.

Amateur Teams, Day two: The Blizzard of '03

You know, I felt a little unclean after that sleazy win yesterday, and the cosmos found a way to help me purge my spirit.

Round 3: Uberhamster (1930) vs. Agent of Karma (1180)

Just like the previous round, we were playing a team much weaker than us, and they were all college students. Everyone else managed to beat their opponents with a minimum of fuss, but my guy was giving me trouble. I had an advantage for most of the game, but it was complicated, and I took a lot of time. I was closing in on him, but my time situation was getting critical. I had about two minutes left to make ten moves when he played a move I didn't expect. It was a blunder, but it was trappy. Unfortunately with no time to think I made the wrong choice and was quickly mated. Looking at the game later I found a couple ways I could have refuted his tactical shot, but considering my shortness of time and bad nerves, even if I had found them I might have lost on time.

When I found out my opponent's rating, I was horrified. A 750 point upset! This has to be about my worst loss, ever. What the hell is the matter with me? Well, no thanks to me the team won the match, 3-1. Little did I know that this would be our last match as a team.

Before lunch I ran into the captain of one of the other teams from our area, and he told me that the weather outlook was grim: as much as two feet of snow was coming our way. The hotel, in its infinite mercy was offering a "special emergency" discount rate for people who were staying an extra night - a mere $99 dollars a night, $10 more than the chess discount rate. That's actually not too bad, but you had to decide if you were staying as soon as possible - after a certain point the rooms were going up to their "normal" rate, which was something like $240 a night. Yowza!

This offer from the hotel had everyone buzzing because suddenly they were taking the weather more seriously. I went upstairs and talked to my roommate, Frederick, and he felt we shouldn't be panicked by the forecasts - we'd lived through a lot worse than they were predicting. I tried to find the rest of the people from our area, but only found one of our other teammates, and he didn't seem too concerned.

We went out to get some lunch, and when we came back, there was a note waiting for us - apparently the rest of our team was heading home TONIGHT! Well! Nice of them to tell us! We tried to get hold of them to talk them out of it, but we couldn't find either one of them. I called Lily on the phone and explained the situation to her, and I warned her that I might have to stay an extra night. While I was talking to her the phone rang in my hand, and when I tried to pick up the other line, I wound up hanging up both Lily and the other person who was calling. I suspected that the other call was our teammates, and I was waited for them to call back, but they never did.

Round time was approaching, so Frederick and I headed down to the ballroom. We both figured that we could talk to our teammates when we met them down at the board.

Round 4: Master's Father (1740) vs. Uberhamster (1930)

This round we were playing up again, and I mean WAY up: we were facing the fifth highest rated team in the whole tournament. They were a team of strong New England players, some of whom I had heard of in my various chess readings.

As we sat down and set up our pieces, it started to dawn on me: our teammates weren't coming at all! They had left already! It made sense: why else would they bother to leave us a note if they were going to see us at the next round? Still, why go home NOW when they could play this evening and still leave before the snow started?

Frederick told me to not start playing while he went to talk to the tournament director. While this was happening the usual fourth round hubbub was going on around me. At the Amateur Team East, the various chess "promotional" prizes are awarded before the fourth round, but I was so upset I couldn't really pay attention. I later learned that the "best chess promotional idea" award was won by a team calling itself the "North Korean Olympiad Team," the joke being that the paranoid hermits of North Korea have never had an Olympiad team. All the team members had little North Korean flags by their boards and they thoughtfully provided American flags for their opponents. At the head of their table was a framed photograph featuring the unsmiling visage of North Korean premier Kim Jong Il. Of course none of the team members looked the least bit Korean.

The winner for "best name" is usually awarded to the team that makes the worst chess pun. This year's winner: "Trent Lott Says: Black Is OK!"

What can I say? Chess jokes don't have a wide appeal.

Frederick returned to the board with some good news, and some bad news. The good news was that he'd found two replacement players. The bad news was that since they were both rated higher than either one of us, this made us ineligible for any prizes. Oh, well. I was willing to accept that since I just wanted to keep playing - I knew any kind of a prize was out of reach for us with only two team members.

To my astonishment I saw that our two replacement players were two little boys - our new first board didn�t look like he could be more than eight years old. Our opponents didn't believe that they were actually higher rated than us, so we had to write down all of our ratings.

My opponent was an older gentleman who was the father of the master playing on board number two. He was lower rated than me, but I was so demoralized that I played the beginning of the game very badly.

Between moves I wandered around the tournament hall, noting all the empty chairs and tables - it seemed like a significant chunk of the players had given up and gone home in the face of the coming snowstorm. Looking at the pairing table I noticed that the entire other team from Frown Town had gone home before they were even paired. That meant that of the eight players at the tournament from Frown Town only Frederick and myself were left.

I also was annoyed that our two teammates had left us in the lurch without even consulting us. Actually, "annoyed" isn't the right word - "saddened" is closer to the truth. I just felt very depressed.

However, I wasn't there to mope - I still had a game to play!

By the time I managed to get my emotions under control I had a very bad position and was far behind on the clock. This mishandling of the clock was getting to be a very bad habit. I started trying to wriggle out of my bad position, and succeeded in opening up the position and making some threats against my opponent's king. At a point where the position seemed the most dicey my opponent took a long think where he seemed to be looking at the other boards more than his own. I quickly understood why: we had already lost on boar three, and while he was watching the boy on board two turned down his king. I looked at the position on board one and it seemed as if the little boy there might actually be able to draw the senior master he was playing there, but he could really hope for no more.

My opponent then did what I was expecting him to do, he offered a draw. I looked at the position and saw that I was probably lost - I could chase his king around for about a half-dozen moves, but when it found safe have I was just lost. I accepted his draw offer, even though it clinched the match for them. Shortly thereafter board one ended in a draw as well.

After the game Frederick and I were in a foul mood: he'd been trounced in his game and my draw was a gift - I'd played the first half of the game wretchedly. We decided to lift our spirits by taking in a movie. The woman at the front desk informed us that there was a mall with a multiplex a few miles to the east of us.

Getting there was a bit of a problem - it had already started snowing and there was three or four inches on the ground. I was pretty used to driving in such conditions but the other drivers of New Jersey were not - we got stuck behind a huge line of cars moving at the rate of about seven miles an hour. They were moving so slowly that we were able to pull over, turn around, get some gas, turn around again and still were able to catch the end of the line again.

When we got to the theater it was all but deserted for a Saturday night, but the movies were still playing. We got there just in time to catch a showing of Daredevil a movie I wanted to see anyway, for professional reasons, of course.

My capsule review of the movie was that it was pretty good, and amazingly true to the comic. In fact, the movie is riddled with references to Daredevil writers and artists and three of the writers even have cameo appearances in the movie - Stan Lee, Frank Miller and Kevin Smith. While I enjoyed the movie, I could easily see someone who's not familiar with the comic losing patience with it. A lot of backstory is telescoped into a very few scenes, and I could easily see non-comic fans scratching their heads at some of the odd things the characters did.

The snow was substantially worse by the time the movie was over, but we made it back to the hotel without incident.