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the hoi polloi to town. “We want to put on a show and we want people to feel important, that this is a big deal,” Newsom said. A unique idea broached at last year’s championship and


expanded this year was the “sponsor a player” initiative. North Carolinians who could not attend but who believed in the mission of the tournament could pay for an entry fee of another player in financial need. This accounted for another handful of entries. “One player anonymously sponsored an underprivileged player last year,” Newsom explained. “We let it be known, and it’s one of those things that’s kind of contagious.” In another case, a player who paid in advance but could not attend asked the organizers to keep his entry to offset the sponsorship of an additional titled player. The most intrepid player had to be Sathiyanarayanan


dinner party at my house. Though I had lowered the average rating of many chess parties in the past, never before had it happened in my own home, but I was pleased to oblige. The players engaged differing viewpoints on which of the numbered Baltika beers were preferable. Baltika 8, an unfiltered wheat offering, went over well. At the gathering, Shabalov and others took turns searching their names on the Apple TV’s Flickr plugin. Everyone got a good laugh seeing older images of the messily-coiffed, student-aged Latvian. Shabalov’s victory


“I don’t think chess players are used to being treated like customers.”


Vijayaraghavan, whose journey was as long as his name. The resident of Dallas was traveling back from a business trip in Chennai, India. Since he had a travel layover anyway, he searched the USCF website for tournaments and arranged his travel plans to play in North Carolina. “Usually you see strong tournaments in New York, Chicago or Dallas,” he said. “It was pretty strange to see one here.” Vijayaraghavan is a class A-player, meaning he would not play any of the grandmasters, but he “wanted to take a look and see what was happening.” He said the availability of flights from the local airport also played a key factor (Charlotte-Douglas International is the tenth-busiest airport in the country). He arrived from India at midnight on Friday and awoke in time to play the morning round. He also appreciated the little touches that the organizers displayed, from the DGT boards and projection screens on boards one and two, to the lack of ropes allowing easier spectatorship of other top games. Vijayaraghavan said the playing site was particularly quiet, which perhaps helped him overcome the jet lag en route to tying for third place in his section with three wins and two draws. In another unlikely event, the winner of the same Under-2000 section, Sulia Mason, had not played in a tournament in eight years! Newsom also displayed an eye toward other details, such as


judiciously updated crosstables, online pairings, food and book concessions, punctual round beginnings, and even airport pickups for some of the titled players. “I’m in the limo business, which doesn’t hurt.” For the chess historian, he displayed a set that Theodore Roosevelt once played on. For the agoraphobic, he meticulously spaced out the playing tables. For the mysophobic, he ensured hotel staff regularly serviced the bathrooms. I tried to help out other visitors to the city. After steering


Lapshun to the right attractions, I invited several players including IMs Marc Esserman and Carlos Perdomo to a Saturday night ping-pong outing at a local bar. Neither would play their best chess in Charlotte, but both are avid in racquet sports. Esserman played competitive tennis in his youth and estimated his ping-pong rating (which uses roughly the chess system) to be 1900, which may make him the top combined chess/ping-pong player in the country. The tournament ended with GMs Giorgi Kacheishvili,


Sergey Kudrin and Alonso Zapata joining Ftacnik, Shabalov, Lapshun and Sarkar in a logjam tie for first. After the tournament ended, a quintet of GMs and IMs celebrated their tournament successes and near misses with a late


uschess.org


was his second win in North Carolina in 2011. In January, he bested three other grandmasters to win clear first in the Land of the Sky tournament in the Blue Ridge Mountains. He said


he enjoys the state’s barbecue, which apparently means all of the regional offerings (North Carolinians have written long treatises on the proper amount of ketchup or vinegar in the sauce, as well as which parts of the pig to use). “I’m a big fan of Southern barbecue and North Carolina in general,” he said. Shabalov echoed the sentiments of other top players by claiming strong competition is “always an extra magnet for me.” He also enjoyed the consultation exhibition, which he had done previously in Virginia Beach with Grandmasters John Fedorowicz and Joel Benjamin. The Pittsburgh resident also did not mind that the Steelers were in town the same weekend, trouncing the hometown Carolina Panthers in a preseason game. Shabalov called it a “dream weekend” and expressed his desire to return next year. When the ledgers were tallied, the organizers estimated they


fell about a dozen players short of breaking even, but the small loss borne by the state association equaled the surplus in 2010’s championship. Still, risk can never be fully mitigated. The biggest scare of this year’s event was Hurricane Irene, which ran amok along the North Carolina coastline the prior weekend. Charlotte is no stranger to major hurricanes—despite being several hundred miles inland; Hurricane Hugo ravaged the city in September, 1989. Curiously, Newsom suspected that Irene may have helped turnout slightly, as several events in late August were cancelled, including some in eastern North Carolina. So if planning to overhaul your state championship,


everything should be considered. From hotels to hurricanes, Newsom and High are already planning for next year. Only a few days after the tournament, High already posted a blog on how to grow the event. The 2012 Democratic National Convention will force a change of weekend, and the two are enlisting “regional recruiters” in nearby states to help publicize the event. But these are just details. The secret formula to growth in the chess community is always the human resources. Newsom summed up the process: “You’ve got two goofy guys here that are smart enough to run their own business but dumb enough to run chess tournaments for no profit.”


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For information on your state’s USCF affiliate, see the Yearbook in the May 2011 issue, available for download at uschess.org, Chess Life Magazine, Downloadable Files. Contact your state org. for state championship information.


Chess Life — January 2012 31


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