United States Amateur Team South, 2016 edition

The 2016 edition of the USATS was held in Tampa, Florida from February 12-14. I'll post more on the tournament later (perhaps even a comment or two about the hotel we stayed in, but probably not), but for now I just want to record that the Clermont Chess Club sent three teams to the tournament, and that we did well.

Our highest rated team was Clermont Chess Club Great Britain Chapter (1785.3 avg.). The team consisted of Tim Bowler and Connor Eickelman from the club itself, and club friends Wayne Strickland and Theo Slade. (Theo and Tim are from Great Britain originally, hence the name.) They had tough pairings, playing two of the top teams, but were still in contention for the Under 1800 prize in the last round. [ADDED: I should note too that Theo played a very tough schedule, against three masters and two experts. Included among the masters were John Nardandrea, who once again led the winning team, and FM Mark Ritter, who won the prize for Best Score on Board One. That was a murderer's row with an average rating of 2163 on the wall chart. That may be the toughest schedule anyone faced in the tournament. I know he was disappointed he only scored 2.5, but overall that was a good total.]

Our second highest rated team was the Clermont Chess Club Pine Hills Original Gangstas Chapter (1777.0 avg.). (Don't ask about the name, or we might tell you.) That team consisted of club regulars Jim McTigue, Paul Leggett, Garry Day, and myself. Somehow we managed to win the Under 1800 prize, no thanks to a late Round 5 meltdown from yours truly. (More on the games in later posts.) The incredible thing to me was that we were actually the leading team for the prize after the fourth round. Still not sure how that happened, but someone's got to win!

And in the Under 1500 division, the Clermont Chess Club Grand Fenwick Chapter (1227.8 avg.) won the Under 1300 prize convincingly with 3.5 match points. The final standings haven't been posted yet, but they had to have been close to finishing third overall. [CORRECTION: The team had three match points and finished in a tie for 5-7 overall. 3.5 mathc points would have tied them for first!] This team consisted of David _H_ Raymond (OUR Dave Raymond, the good one!), Norm Meintel, John Wolfe, and Thomas Lee Johnson. Again a team of all regulars, and I'm particularly pleased with this team's accomplishments. Thomas is fairly new to competitive chess and only had 11 rated games prior to the tournament. John is coming back from a decades long lay-off from the game, though he had two other tournaments under his belt from recent months. It had been two & a half years since Dave played in a tournament prior to his return two weeks ago, and Norm hadn't played a rated game in over three & a half years. Norm played especially well, scoring 3.5 points out of five, and he had one really nice endgame grind that I hope to post later. Nice work from a newbie and a bunch of drop-outs!*

So we scored two team trophies, which was all we could realistically hope for. (Great Britain and Pine Hills were competing for the same trophy.) Paul quipped, "Once again the Clermont Chess Club has demonstrated its dominance of the lower echelons of the USATS!" 

True, but not entirely fair! Unless we were to get the best the club has had through the years (e.g., Mark Ritter Ryan**, Theo Slade, Ray Robson(!)), and maybe recruit a couple of other strong players, we simply don't have the firepower to compete for the top prizes. (Alternately, Connor needs to jump to a much higher plateau.) But this is why they've got sections, and we put up a fight in our class! We do what we can, and that also means putting Garry Day on the team, since Garry's teams always come away with trophies for first place in these events. I doubt anyone has a better lifetime record, percentage-wise. I believe this is now five wins in five tries for Garry.

Good work, gentlemen, and perhaps we can do this again some time!

* I should add that I was returning from almost seven years away from rated chess. I know what it's like, fellas....

** Thanks to Paul for the correction. Sorry to all the Marks involved!