For the 21st year, players from all over the Northeast competed in the largest class tournament in Massachusetts: the Eastern Class Championships. The first Eastern Class was held in 1992 in Needham, with 212 players. This year’s event was held March 2-4 at the Host Hotel at Cedar Lake in Sturbridge, drawing a stillrespectable 183. An unusual feature of this tournament is that players are only allowed to play up one section, since it’s a class championship rather than an open.
New York GM Mikheil Kekelidze won the Master section on tiebreak over fellow GM Alexander Ivanov of Massachusetts. The two leaders drew their last round game to fi nish with four points out of fi ve, fi nishing half a point of ahead of GMs Tamaz Gelashvili and Sergey Kudrin. Joshua Colas, a promising young player from New York, won the 1st U2300 prize with 2.5 points.
Winners of the other sections were: Expert: David Carter of Vermont; Class A: Mark Bourque of Connecticut; Class B: Doug Ryan of Vermont; Class C: Patrick Gardocki of New Jersey; Class D: Erik Elbieh of Massachusetts; Class E: David Flanagan of Massachusetts.
Bill Goichberg, president of the Continental Chess Association, directed the tournament, assisted by his wife Brenda, their cat Lucky, and Bob Messenger. |