Is there such a thing as a perfectly-run tournament?
I’m not sure that there is, but today came close.
For starters, today’s tournament had less players than we expected. There were three no-shows. Not ideal from a business perspective, but the disruption to the tournament was minimal. The unlucky players in quad 3 were unfortunate enough to lose a game each, but we were able to resolve the other no-shows in such a way that no one was inconvenienced.
The upside of no-shows is that less players means more focus from the tournament directors on the tournament as a whole. This is on top of the fact there were only 23 players signed up, a bit less than normal. So the tournament started on time, ended early, player concerns were immediately addressed, noise and distractions were minimal, and everyone had a good time overall. Definitely a positive result.
We even had an apprentice tournament director visiting today to learn from the situations that arose. To our surprise only once was a tournament director summoned to solve a game problem - a player inadvertently made an illegal move by moving a king into check. (Solution: the king is moved to the original square, for touch-move purposes the player is considered to have touched the king, and the opponent receives a bonus two minutes on his clock.) Easily solved.
In fact, nothing really bad at all happened. The no-show in quad 3 aside. We like this. The ideal tournament is one where the directors are bored because everything is running smoothly. That never quite happens at youth tournaments, but today got close.
Of course perfection takes more than a lack of problems. It needs good things to happen. Sorta. Good in chess is sometimes a matter of perspective.
Take quad 2 -- our second highest quad. Aayush Saxena won the quad with 2.5 points in spite of being the lowest rated of the four players in the group. That’s an impressive upset, and one that he should be proud of. (Aayush will also be pleased when he notices he gained over 150 rating points for his performance today.)
Quad 1 was the opposite. The group was handily won by Theodore Bernstein who defeated his first opponent in about ten minutes. At 1409 rating he was just over 400 rating points higher than the nearest player in the tournament. Before Theodore left, his parents and I had a long conversation as to how and where to find tournaments with more appropriate challenges for his skill. He’s a friendly kid and we’d like to see him play more at Livingston, but he also needs a somewhat stronger opponent.
Quad 4 ended differently again. Julia Domanski and Kabit Upadhyay tied for first with 2.5 points each. They were strong enough to beat all of their opponents, but neither was strong enough to defeat the other -- their game in round two ended in a draw. A fitting ending for two such focused players.
Our winners in Quads 3 and 5 deserve to have their names mentioned as well. Quad 3 was won by Alexander Florea, while Quad 5 was won by Alexander Marquis (1st place) and Theodore Wang (2nd). Quad 5 had five players, hence why there’s a second place award for the section.
It was only after the tournament ended and I was driving home that I realized the tournament wasn’t as perfect as I realized. I had forgotten to take photos! I apologize for the oversight. It’s not like the tournament staff was overwhelmed today. It just slipped our mind. Again, apologies for this. I’ll be sure to snap some great shots next time I’m back in Livingston.
Which, in case you’re wondering, will be on December 3. On behalf of today’s staff, we hope to see you all there.
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