From
Severine E. Wamala

A BIG THANK YOU FOR ALL THE PARTICIPANTS IN THE 2001 NORTHEAST CHESS FALL GETAWAY OPEN held November 16-18.

            This was even a stronger tournament than the 2001 February Getaway.  We had 7GMs, 5IMs, many FMs and several seasoned Masters in the Open section.  At the end of the tournament there were two notable youngsters with exceptional performances.  IM Hikaru Nakamura (2475) upset GM Alexander Kalinin (2630) in the last round to tie for first place with three GMs Leonid Yudasin, Alek Wojtkiewicz and Alex Ivanov for first place and all posting performance ratings of 2674, 2725, 2775 and 2710 respectively!  The other impressive youngster was Josh Bakker (1841).  Josh opted to play in the open section and he was seeded second to last.  If Josh played five Garcias he would have ended up 5-0.  But in any case he beat two experts, drew one master and only lost to GM Alex Stripunsky.  Josh posted remarkable performance rating of 2456 (recall he is rated 1841) and also won the U2300 prize.

Needless to say there is so much that goes into hosting a big tournament.  Financial risk is the least of all.  From advertising, coordinating hotel schedule, negotiating a contract, getting all the necessary material to run the tournament and the list goes on.  The hours (I mean hundreds of hours) spent can never be recovered.  The only pay back I get is when actually players show up and play.  For those who did show up, thank you and please come back. And those who have not yet showed up, see you soon at the next getaway.

The next Getaway is February 8-10, 2002.