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Boylston Chess Weaver Adams U1800 Championship
Andrew Bernal won the 2021 Weaver Adams Qualifer and is the U1800 Boylston Champion. He is eligible to play in the upcoming Reubens Landy U2200 club championship.
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| Banner: Tony Cortrizas, Jr |
Weaver Adams 2021
U1800 Boylston Chess Club Championship (Bernardo Iglesias was the TD.)
The Weaver Adams U1800 Championship
begins the annual club championship cycle. It is followed by the
Reubens-Landey U2200 Championship, the winner of which is seeded into
the club championship - a round robin tournament of Boylston masters.
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Past winners of the Weaver Adams are:
2021 Andrew Bernal
2020 - pandemic -
2019 Bernardo Iglesias, Pitambar Dayal, Tony Cortizas, Jr.
2018 Bernardo Iglesian
2017 Joaquin Carlson, John Graf
2016 Jonathan Mark Lee, Vlad Jan Gaciu, Bernardo Iglesias
2015 Tom Medrek
2014 Timothy O'Malley
2013 Joel Bryan Wald, Brandon Wu
2012 Brian Perez-Daple
2011 Ken Ho, Mike Griffin, Khikmet Sadykov
2010 Alexander Paphitis
2009 Frank Frazier
2008 Jonathan Lee, Adam Yedidia
2007 Alexander Paphitis
2006 Alexander Paphitis, Jonathan Lee, Lior Rozhansky
2005 Robert Oresick, Joshua Blanchfield
2004 Mike Griffin
2003 Robert Oresick
2002 William MacLellan
2001 Mike Griffin
2000 Stephen E. Smith
1999 Bryan Clark
1998 Bryan Clark, Charles G. Alex
1997 Walter A. Driscoll III
1996 Hector Perez, Jared Becker
1995 Miguel A. Santana
1994 Andrew L. Yerre
1993 Charles G. Alex
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about Weaver Adams:
WEAVER WARREN ADAMS
(born Apr-28-1901, died Jan-06-1963) United States of America
Weaver Warren Adams
was born on April 28, 1901 in Dedham Massachusetts. He was an American
chess master. He participated in the U.S. Championship in 1936, 1940,
1944, 1946 and 1948. He won the Massachusetts State Championship in
1937, 1938, 1941 and 1945.
In 1939, he wrote a book entitled "White to Play and Win." After publication he played in the U.S. Open at Dallas. He did not win a single game as White (3 losses and 1 draw) and won all his games (4 games) as Black!
Weaver Adams won the 49th U.S. Open, held in Baltimore, in 1948. He also wrote "Simple Chess", "How to Play Chess", and "Absolute Chess."
.
In May, 1947, Weaver Adams, New England Champion, gave a 16-board simul in San Jose, winning all his games.
Below
is a photograph taken in Hastings on 28 December 1950. Lord Dunsany
(standing on the right) is watching the first-round game between Alan
Phillips and Weaver Adams.
__________________________________________________
Weaver W. Adams An Autobiography
Massachusetts State Chess Association, 1949, Robert W. Reddy (Ed.) p. 6-8
I was born on April 28th, 1901 to Frank H. Adams, native of Dedham,
Mass., salesman for many years for Bellantine Breweries and later (after
prohibition) for Ceresota Flour, and Ethel Weaver Adams, native of
Newmarket, NH and graduate of Wellesley College. I am not directly
related to the Presidents, John and John Quincy Adams, although the
Adams's in and about Massachusetts are mostly of the same family,
deriving from a Henry Adams who landed in Braintree in 1644. The family
is quite famous and boasts of many statesmen, writers, historians,
judges, preachers, etc. Footing the list comes a national chess
champion. In the old days he would
have surely been branded as a black sheep for wasting his time at so
idle a pastime, and perhaps by many even today.
My schooling was conventional, Dedham Public schools and Dedham High
School, but then they tried to make an engineer out of me by sending me
to Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The result was not too good.
During the first year a half dozen of us, after playing a few
games at Walker Memorial in Cambridge, would regularly trek across the
bridge to Ye Olde Boston Chess Club on Ashburton Place or to various
dives in the West End, not the least attractive of which was the
Lighted Lamp operated by Boston's famous Ambrose Gring.
Those were really the balmy days of chess in Boston. Well I remember listening to tales told many times over by John Barry, Will Miller, George Babbitt,
and a host of others most of whom are no longer living. I seemed to
have been a favorite with John Barry because I would talk chess and
analyze with him until 4 A. M. in the morning after everybody else had
either gone home or turned to a bridge game. At any rate I believe I
learned most of my chess from Mr. Barry, and in 1922 attained to the
club championship.
An autobiography is supposed to contain a statement as to when one
learned chess, although it's not clear as to why this is so important.
However, for the sake of the record, I began playing at the age of
about twelve. An older brother of a friend next door taught the two of
us to play, and would play us both simultaneously blindfold at Queen
odds.
What I do think is important, however, is the time when he took us to
Boston once to visit the Boston Chess Club which at that time was
located in an alley off Boylston Street. I shall never forget the
thrill it was to me to see for the first time the large club size
pieces in action. Instinctively I seemed to feel that that was me. A
friend of mine tells me that he had a similar experience on first
visiting a stock exchange and seeing the ticker tapes in action.
Curiously, all the rest of his life has .been spent in the stock
market.
My chess activities , of course, did not have a good effect on my
marks at M.I.T., and, due redness of my report card at the half year, I
was politely asked to take a vacation. This I was quite agreeable too,
since it afforded me additional time for chess playing. A year went by
before my parents inveigled me into attending a military school in
northern Vermont, and, six months later, re-entering my class at M.I.T.
All knowledge is useful, and it is always futile to look back and say
if we had done so and so, life would have been better. It is completely
impossible to foresee the over all plan. We can live but a day at a
time.
To continue my story, about 1924 Harold Morton
had just won the championship of the Providence, R. I., chess club,
and a purse was gotten up for a match to take place between Mr. Morton
and myself for the championship of New England. Up to that time John Barry
had been unofficially recognized as the strongest player in N. E., so,
with his consent and approval it was logical that the winner of the
match should hold that title. Thus, in 1924 I became the NE Champion and
held the title until 1929 when Morton beat me in a succeeding match.
Another match between us did not take place until about 1938 which
Morton again won.
After his death in 1939 the title came under the control of the N. E.
Chess Association and has been decided by an annual tournament (usually
held over Labor Day weekend) ever since, which is all to the good,
since I am strongly opposed to the awarding of titles through private
matches. The tournament method is pre-eminently fair and much more
attractive to both the players and the public.
Thereby closes the local chapter in my chess career. At this time – say
1936 - I think that both Morton and myself - I know I did - thought
that we were pretty good chess players. We were in for a rude
awakening. In that year (1936) was held the first tournament for the
Chess Championship of the United States, due to the retirement of Frank J. Marshall.
I recall that after the first few rounds I kept figuring that I might
still win the tournament, provided I won all of the remainder of my
games. In fact, this went on for several rounds, before I finally gave
up hope of first prize. After nine rounds I was relatively proud of my
score, since I had three wins and six losses, while Morton had nine
goose eggs in a row. However, we finished in a tie for last place, since
in the remaining six rounds Morton got six draws, and it was my turn
for goose eggs. I mention this experience in order to caution the reader
that unless he happens to play regularly in the chess clubs of New
York City, he shouldn't put too much store by his showing in the chess
clubs of other cities. There is really a difference.
In a considerable sense I feel that my serious chess playing did not
begin until after 1936. Hundreds of hours I spent on opening analysis,
with the result that there began forming in my mind the idea that by
means of precise play White could perhaps emerge from the opening with
just enough edge to win. Thus developed a small volume published in
1959 by the David McKay Co. of Philadelphia entitled "White to Play and Win",
by Weaver W. Adams. Forthwith, in a tournament at Dallas, Texas in
1940 I proceeded to lose all of my games playing white and win all of
my games playing black!
However, I still stick to my theory, and even under the handicap of
bucking my own analysis (most writers sedulously avoid playing a move
which they have recommended as best, because of fear of having to play
against a line which their opponent has prepared against it) and
despite the hours which I am advised that many of my opponents spend in
trying to discover mistakes in my published variations in "Simple Chess,"
I nevertheless lost but a single half point with the white pieces in
the Open Tournament at Baltimore in 1948. And it wasn't because the boys
didn't try. There were my moves open for all to see in "Simple Chess."
They could select any one of a hundred different opening variations
and I would play the exact moves as published. Is this not just a
little significant that white can win? And, if so, why is my favorite
opening the Vienna, so damned by faint praise, and so shunned by all
the celebrities? You answer that one. I can’t.
I don't wish to take up space by tournament records. All in all, they
could be a lot better, except perhaps locally, inasmuch as I have won every City of Boston, Massachusetts State, end New England tournament in which I have taken part since 1956
- some dozen or more altogether. I will merely say that having played
in eighteen national tournaments, including U. S. National, U. S. Open,
Ventnor City, and the Pan American in Los Angeles in 1945, I feel that
this experience should mean something, and I hope eventually to
demonstrate that it is possible to play chess with consistent scientific
accuracy.
The following is an example of such a game. It is one of five which I
have thus far played with similar accuracy for the Log Cabin Chess Team
of West Orange, New Jersey, of which I have recently become a member.
It was played at Elizabethtown, New York, vs. a Montreal Team, and was
part of the coast to coast 1949 match between Canada and the U. S.
Adams,W - Guze [B72]
US v Canada, 1940
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 g6 6.h3 Bg7 7.Be3 Nc6 8.Qd2
a6 9.g4 Nxd4 10.Bxd4 0-0 11.0-0-0 b5 12.Bg2 Bb7 13.f4 Qc7 14.Rhe1 Rfd8
15.Qf2 Nd7 16.Bxg7 Kxg7 17.Nd5 Bxd5 18.exd5 Nb6 19.f5 Nc4 20.g5 gxf5
21.Qxf5 Qd7 22.Qf4 Rac8 23.Be4 Rc5 24.b4 Rc7 25.Bf5 Qe8 26.Qd4+ Kg8
27.Qh4 e5 28.Qxh7+ Kf8 29.Qh8+ Ke7 30.Qf6+ Kf8 31.Re4 1-0
Alex Cherniack
has posted 8 games between Weaver Adams and Harry Lyman, where you can
see Harry Lyman 's opinion of the forced win for white theory.
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read this profile of Adams by
Stephan Dann
Weaver Adams
Chess Journalist, Historian, and Organizer.
Weaver
Adams "started" writing "White to Play & Win" in 1935, and, an
early edition of this "informal" publication was with Harlow Daly's
papers, ledgers and scrapbooks that Harry Lyman & I obtained in
1975...
Adams
continued "publishing" revisions to his "dogged" theories for some 25
years, the last editions of what he termed "Simple" and "Absolute"
chess being "issued" about 1960, though the last year his health
enabled him to "carry on" might have been 1959...
The
greatest collection of Adams' material published was "edited" by Sam
Sloan in 2007, but few know of the existence of this "limited" edition,
published on demand book that would have had Harry Lyman "giggling"
with delight, as it was about chess, and not about the tragic life of
one of its players.
I
posted copies of some crosstables from 1905 to 1939 at the Mass. Open
in Leominster yesterday, including games from the 1964 U.S. Open. It
was an effort to "complete" the weekday/weeknight chess events in
Massachusetts before 1940, but most of this would have been lost were
it no for the dogged efforts of Harlow Daly to document them for his own
records, to "index" his games...and you can view this & more today & on Monday in Leominster...
My
work with John Donaldson and Andy Ansel (who attended yesterday in
Leominster, driving up from Long Island with his daughter), focus on
games as the real history, not the politics and "entertainment" that
sometimes accompanies chess gatherings.
Collecting
games played by Weaver Adams, Harry Lyman and other past chess legends
(you will see the many names in Daly's ledgers and scrapbooks from Abe
Moses Sussmann--New England Champion at the dawn of the 20th
century--to Putzman, Cabot, Gring, Morton, Sturgis, Welch, etc.) right
at the Boylston CC in the box of 2,000 game cards, history that you can
hold right in your hand.
The
time has come to scan these cards, and, use them as the basis of the
history of the club, history of Boston and Massachusetts chess, and as
basis to do new promotional efforts for the game without borders on the
Internet.
E-books
on Weaver Adams, Harlow Daly and the 1964 U.S. Open (as well as the
1964 Fischer Tour--also by John Donaldson) are not only possible, but
are the next logical step in preserving the legacy of past chess giants
and encouraging future educational and historical endeavors at the
Boylston Chess Club, and the work of the Boylston Chess Foundation.
Weaver
Adams' family is still alive and well in Dedham, and is confident that
the chess community will continue to preserve his memory in the hearts
and minds of future generations. Like Pillsbury, we will never forget
his contributions to the Royal Game.
E-books
may not in themselves help finance efforts to finance clubs or run
tournaments, but these may validate the efforts of .org chess
foundations to raise funds to carry out their missions.
It's
time for sharing the "wealth" of the 1975 donation from Harlow Daly
beyond "75 years of affection for chess" and just 150 games. Just the
typos in the hastily prepared 1975 volume would fill a page or
two...and we owe it to the memory of Harry Lyman to do a much better job
the second time around.
You have my continued support in preserving the Boylston Chess Club as one of America's premier chess shrines.
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The Weaver Adams Qualifer is the first part of the Boylston Chess Club championship cycle.
