| | Club Spotlight - Miles Memorial Major Success |
| | Stephen Dann |
| | August 2014 |
| |  This event was held April 5th at the Boylston Chess Club.
It was an electrifying time. The first instance which I saw the TD close registration because there was no room in the tournament hall to accommodate the number of prospective players. With byes and the insertion of another table, the total enrollment was 55. A record for the Somerville venue.
GM Tony Miles was a character of the professional chess circuit. From playing one tournament game on a stretcher (with a back injury) to responding to Karpov’s 1.e4 with the puckish 1. . . . a6!? Tony Miles was his own man. And local  GM Larry Christiansen was a good friend of Tony's. So it was fitting that Larry and Natasha Christiansen not only guaranteed the $1,000 prize fund, also gave the introductory pre-tournament remarks. The crowd, players, their parents, friends and siblings were given a treat as Larry told a number of funny stories about his memories of Tony Miles in action.
The event attracted some top local players: IM David Vigorito, IM Marc Esserman, NM Mika Brattain, NM Almir Dzhumaev (visiting scholar at MIT/Harvard from Moscow) Expert Yang Dai from MIT, NM Lawyer Times, NM Professor Timothy Sage of the Northeastern University Physics Department, FM Steven Winer, NM Farzad Abdi, FM Bill Kelleher, and NM Chris Williams. Not a bad collection of players for a BCC Saturday event, to be sure.
 The winner of the event was poised: IM David Vigorito showed the depths of his skills, with black and with white, winning all four of his games in the Open Section of 24 players, the final deciding game being against his talented student, Mika Brattain.
 Mika scored 3 points to share 3-5th place with NM Almir Dzhumaev and Yang Dai. Another critical game of the event occurred in Round 4: FM Steven Winer vs IM Marc Esserman. Things looked pretty even and then an explosion of moves, rapid-fire, produced a win for Esserman when the dust settled, and secured 2nd place in the event for the IM.
In the U1950 Section, with 25 players, Jarrod Tavares and Jeremy Bader each scored 3.5 points to share 1-2nd place.
Above, Jarrod is playing black vs. Eric Feng, while Jeremy has the black pieces against Seth Lieberman in Round 3. Paul Mishkin and Eric Feng shared 3-4th place with 3 points.
J. Timothy Sage 2174 - IM David Vigorito 2504 0-1
Tony Miles mem BCC (3)
04.05.2014
This was the only game were I was in any kind of trouble.
IM David Vigorito 2504 - Mika Brattain 2412 1-0
Tony Miles mem. BCC (4)
05.04.2014
Vigorito,D
Mika and I were each at 3-0, but Esserman and Times were right behind us with 2.5. I felt I really had to push for a win because a draw could result in a four way tie for first.
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