The tournament site
A 5-0 score in the Open section yields a payout of $1500, not as large as the $64,000 a 9-0 score would have earned at the US Championship, but not nearly as hard either. The fact that the prize structure yields fighting chess was demonstrated last year when several games in the last round of the Open section ran for over five hours. Clearly, no one was willing to take a quick draw to drive home early. This year, the tournament has six sections ranging from Open to Under 1100.
Last year, this was the second largest non-scholastic tournament in Maryland, and the entries are running at a rate more than twice that of last year.
Another new feature of this tournament is that we’ll be experimenting with directly texting players’ pairings to their phones. This is a beta test of what we want to do with our larger scholastic tournaments to help avoid the crush when hundreds of players try to find their pairings at the same time.
More information about the Chesapeake Open is available at http://chesapeakeopen.eventbrite.com.
Also starting on June 19 is the New York International at the Marshall Chess Club. Find out more about that event here.