Sunday, June 05, 2011

Esserman in Europe

Bolyston Board and Boston Blitz member IM Marc Esserman is chesstouring Europe this summer. We will try to follow him via the Interwebs.

His first leg was to the International Chess Festival in Wunsiedel, Germany. After winning his first 4 rounds and taking the sole lead ahead of three GMs, the Germans started to notice:

(See halfway down the page under US-Boy Esserman)
http://www.wunsiedel-schachfestival.de/

In the final three rounds against the strongest tournament participants, Marc managed 3 draws, enough for 2nd place and an 11 point ELO rating gain, pushing Marc over the 2450 milestone. Only IM Stopa was able to pull ahead and take clear first place.

You can see Marc in the winner's circle to the left in this picture:



You can see the crosstables here:

http://www.wunsiedel-schachfestival.de/meisterturnier/turnier_index_meister.htm

If you are trying to navigate the crosstable, the format is pairing #,color,score. So for example, "43w1" means the player faced #43 with the White (weiss) pieces and score 1 point. The "s" means the player had black (schwarz).

Good luck to Marc on this tour. We'll have to ask him later how many Smith-Morras appeared in Wunsiedel!

4 comments:

Ken Ho said...

Good luck this summer, Marc! Watch out for smartphone cheaters!
:-(

Tony Cortizas, Jr. said...

Great post, Jason!

Marc's progress will be fun to follow. I assume he's doing this European tour to gain norms - maybe Marc can offer updates on his norm status. Did he gain any for 2nd place in this event?

Rihel said...

Tony, just glancing at the crosstable, I don't think Marc's performance here is quite enough for a GM norm.

Marc will also need to get his rating over 2500, so that is also a major goal of this summer.

Erabin said...

keep it real catdog.