Chess Buzz for August 29, 1997

This week's buzz comes to us courtesy of National Master Matt Guthrie, a member of the tournament staff at the 1997 Interplay US Chess Championships. Matt is onsite in Chandler, Arizona, and in addition to directing he is acting as press liaison for the games each round. He gets a unique look at the event, and has provided us with these exclusive comments for this week's Buzz.

Random thoughts from Chandler

A point to ponder: Has a major tournament ever before been held in a town that shares its name with a Grandmaster?

The search for truth: Kaidanov, on Seirawan-Schwartzman: "Yasser blundered his queen, then black defended badly." Schwartzman, on the same game: "Yasser played a brilliant sacrifice, then I defended very well."

Penmanship comments: Are those really chess moves written on Fedorowicz's scoresheet? The penmanship award goes to Zamora, but he usually stops keeping score because of time pressure by move 20, so he's no help to the person who inputs the games. By the way, why are the women's scoresheets so much more legible than the men's?

Let's hope creativity is its own reward: David Bronstein once suggested awarding prizes based on the number of interesting games played. If that were to become a criterion here, Gurevich, who has produced 1.c4 e5 2.g3 d6 3.Bg2 e5 4.b4! cxb4 5.a3! and 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 a6, would be near the head of the pack, instead of languishing at -2.

It never rains in Arizona, except on the off day, when the biggest storm of the year kept everybody out of the pool, and most indoors, except for the intrepid few who ventured up the highway to Flagstaff.

Another point to ponder: have two games in the same round ever exceeded 115 moves before?

Looking for even more Buzz on the 1997 Interplay US Chess Championships? Wonder why International Arbiter Carol Jarecki was outside in the 103 degree heat spray-painting chess sets before round 1? Or which game IM Jeremy Silman called "beautiful and theoretically important"? Check the List of Features in our section on the Championship.

Well, that's the buzz for this week.

Have a hot story for us? A trend you want us to look into? An item only chessplayers can appreciate? Write [email protected]

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• This week's Fun Fact: US Championship Trivia
• The Buzz for August 22: Biological Clock (chess poetry) and more on the Championship
• The Buzz for August 15: Wildcards and Cinderella Players: Who Will Win the 1997 Interplay US Chess Championship?
• The Buzz for August 1: Walter Korn (Chess and Books)
• The Buzz for July 25: Chess and Wall Street
• The Buzz for July 18: After Karpov and Kasparov--Who will be the next World Champion?
• The Buzz for July 11: Championship Formats?
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