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Boor and Rosen Share First at CCC UNAM Invitational
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- Created: 24 May 2013 24 May 2013
On May 11 and 12, Chicago Chess Center Founders' Court donors were invited to a preview event at which they got the opportunity to square off against local masters and junior experts. The event was held at the Chicago extension campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, whose flagship campus in Mexico City has a strong tradition of supporting chess, including hosting a chess festival headlined by Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov in 2010 and by Judit Polgar and Magnus Carlsen in 2012.
Titled players in attendance included FMs Carl Boor and Eric Rosen, who shared a top score of 3.5/4. Third place was taken by Vince Hart with 2.5/4, and fourth place by Michael Auger with 2.0/4. Full Crosstable
The two-day, four-round, G/75 + 30s increment schedule and $600 guaranteed prize fund were chosen to showcase a format the CCC has considered offering as a seasonal open tournament.
"It worked out well," Boor said of the uncommon time control. "It almost feels like action chess at times, near the end of games. . . . I think it’s a good system."
Boor faced Rosen in the third round, in a 60-move game featuring an unorthodox opening followed by a high-level positional battle. Rosen identified the game as his favorite of the weekend. Boor praised the game as well but cited the excitement of his fourth-round game against Auger, a touch-and-go Exchange Grünfeld that he characterized as "a swindle game," in choosing that one as his own favorite.
After the event, Boor declared it a "fun tournament with full-blooded chess every game."
Chicago Chess Center NFP Inc. borrows its name from the club founded in Lincoln Park in 1977 by Jules Stein, which for many years occupied a space on Southport Avenue. The well-loved establishment closed its doors 23 years ago, having survived less than two years after Stein’s death. It had filled a void left by the venerable Chicago Chess Club (originally the Chicago Chess and Checker Club), which for 89 years had been the center of the Chicago chess scene, only to suffer the crushing misfortune of losing one downtown home after another to demolition, until it finally left the Loop and dissolved soon thereafter.
The new organization hopes to renew this interrupted history by creating a metropolitan chess center that will be not just a club but a school of chess, a welcoming destination and gathering place for players, and the focus of a vibrant and expanded chess scene.
Its next preview event, a one-day open Swiss, is tentatively scheduled to take place near the end of June.
Chicago Chess Center NFP Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation and is seeking donations to secure and furnish a site, with the goal of opening in fall 2013. For more information, visit http://www.chichess.org/.