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Report from the 1998 Interplay Chess Championships
International Arbiter Carol Jarecki files this report at the end of the SemiFinals phase of the 1998 Interplay US Championships. There were two SemiFinals matches: one between GM de Firmian and GM Tal Shaked (the 1997 FIDE World Junior Champion) and one between defending US Champion Joel Benjamin and GM Dmitry Gurevich. Each match was a "best of 4" game series. The winner of each match advanced to the Finals. Tal was a gracious loser. Everyone congratulated him on his accomplishment in the Championship after a difficult year. A bunch of us went out to dinner that night and had a great time--Nick, Christine, Joel, Tal, Craig and his wife Molly, Todd Bardwick (Denver NM who writes the chess column for the Rocky Mt. News) and I. We had the waitress toss the coin for color--it came up heads giving Joel his wish of white in the first game. The playoff day was a well-deserved holiday. Another gorgeous sunny day in the mid-sixties. The snow on the mountain tops has been retreating under the bright sun so only the higher ones are still white. I took full advantage of my only free day and drove into the mountains to stay with friends who have a few hundred acres at the 9,500-foot level. Great hiking, beautiful panoramas, spectacular sunset and sunrise but I didn't get to see the elk that have been wandering around there. This weekend the U. S. West Open was held at the Doubletree giving some of the players from the Senior Open a chance to get in somemore chess. It certainly helped pack the Championship Finals with fascinated spectators and fill the analysis room to overflowing. Finalists Nick and Joel did not disappoint. A fascinating and difficult game played in slow motion until the last several moves. It took nearly three hours to get through the first 15 moves with long periods of deep thought on both sides. Since each move adds 30 seconds to the player's time, and they hadn't made many, they were getting a mite short. Some exchanges put a bit of padding on the clocks, then concentration set in again. Finally they got to move 30 with each clock showing about 4 minutes remaining. The final flurry ended at move 38 with Benjamin's resignation. The audience had the pleasure of watching the postmortem up close. Play was again in the Colorado Rooms and conditions were excellent. The hotel staff finally understands what "quiet" means and the utility and kitchen corridors are posted with big signs reading, "When working in this area be as quiet as possible. Critical chess games at stake." I wish all host hotels would be as cooperative as this Doubletree has been. Our next challenge will be on Tuesday when the 8-Ballers will be cheering in the adjacent bar again. They are the new United Airlines recruits and have some sort of weekly initiation session, a very noisy one. We'll be moving back to the Grand Ballroom for the third round in order to ensure a quiet atmosphere. Nikita took Tal for a drive into the mountains today before he headed back to Tucson. The players have enjoyed their championship here in Denver thanks in part to the local support and consideration, although a few where so engrossed in mental preparation throughout the games that they didn't take advantage of it before too late. I don't think it was mentioned earlier, but ex-co-champion IM Stuart Rachels now lives in Boulder where he is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado. IM Mike Valvo, one of the public analyists for the Deep Blue match, lives there also.
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