“Fans don’t boo nobodies” ~ Reggie Jackson

The New England Nor’easters inaugural season in the US Chess League came to a close this past Saturday, November 20. This came as a result of our great success in capturing the title of US Chess League champions, 2010. After a dominant regular season, the Nor’easters kept up the pace in the post season, and in the process amassing a monstrous 12/13 score, with 11 won matches and 2 tied matches (both against our crosstown rivals, the Boston Blitz!). Before I get into the match that propelled us into the stratosphere, I would like to go back to week 8 for a moment.

At the time, we decided, as a team, not to reveal what happened so that our formula for success would not be known. Now that the season is over, I think it’s a good time to do a proper report on the beginning phase of the match. The boards in question were boards 1 and 3, where FM Braden Bournival and myself had black against IM Irina Krush and GM Giorgi Kacheishvili, respectively. Kachi is a great player, and he has had very good results in the league. With him having the white pieces against some random dude, he must have been expected to win. Likewise, IM Krush is quite reasonable on the third board, and Bournival is a little bit out of practice. These were the two boards where we seemed to be most vulnerable.

Enter IM Dave Vigorito, our manager, a renowned opening theoretician and author, the USCLs 2010 father of the year, and the brains behind the whole operation. His keen eye noted a key game from the last round of the 2010 World Open- the game Kacheishvili – Vallejo Pons. This game featured the piece sacrifice line of the mainline Slav, and Kachi played an interesting idea with 9. … Nxf7!?. Vallejo, however, was up to the task and managed to force an equal endgame. This had not gone unnoticed by yours truly, but Dave took it one step further. He realized that Krush is Kachi’s student, and he likely had shown her this line. As a result, he recommended that Braden play the piece sacrifice line, in hopes of surprising Krush’s intended “surprise” move by following Vallejo’s plan. She never could have suspected that he would know exactly what to do, and Braden held a draw without any difficulties on the board where our opponents were the most favored. Kachi naturally assumed that when I played the piece sac line I had prepared for Nxf7 (which I had), but I spent much more of my time preparing for the mainline, 9. fxe4. I found some interesting ideas, and Kachi erred at some point, leaving me with a slightly better endgame that I ground into a win. However, the most genius part of this operation was Dave’s recommendation for me to stall a little so that the Krush-Bournival game reached the position after 8. … Bxe4 first. While Kachi would know that I had prepared this line, there would be no way for Krush to know that we had heavily prepared Nxf7- she has never played it before, so why would Brad even look at such a move? As a result, we got exactly what we wanted from the opening in these games, and we scored 1.5/2 where we seemed to be underdogs on paper. Now that our past history has been explained, lets move onto the match that can be seen as current history.

The Miami Sharks had a rough start to the season, losing their first 3 matches. However, after that they never took their eyes off the prize and won match after match and ultimately found themselves representing the Western Division in the finals for the third time in the 6 years of the USCL’s existence. Because their first two attempts to take the crown were unsuccessful, the Sharks must have been particularly bloodthirsty this time around. Their lineup boasted GM Julio Becerra, and I entirely agree with my teammate Charles Riordan that he is “simply the most successful player in the history of the US Chess League”. He won the MVP award for the third time this year, and it was clear that I would have my hands full on board one. On board 2, FM Marcel Martinez stepped in. Martinez had also been extremely successful as of late, and he has pulled off some very important clutch victories over the years that have helped Miami get to the finals so often. He would be playing against IM Robert Hungaski, who had a 6/7 and a performance rating of over 2700 going into the match. Next up for Miami was FM Charles Galofre, another strong player who was very successful this season, albeit only across three games. He would take on New England’s FM Christopher Chase, a longtime veteran and 7-time champion of the Boylston Chess Club. And on the last board, Miami’s young upstart Nicholas Rosenthal would be taking on our own NM Alex Cherniack, the most consistent fourth board in the league.

Unfortunately for everyone, some misfortunes caused the dignity of the championship match to be slightly drained. FM Charles Galofre’s car broke down, and he was unable to get to the match before his game would have to be forfeited. For some reason, no other Miami player was able to replace him and he could not catch a cab, so New England was given a forfeit victory on board 3. I was not sure how to feel about this- obviously it was nice to take the lead, but this was not how I wanted the championship match to be won, especially with critics constantly accusing us of just being lucky. However, as it would turn out, this turn of events probably would not have mattered.

The other 3 games in the match were very interesting. Rosenthal picked up his fourth upset victory in a row (very impressive!) and beat our till-now undefeated rock, Cherniack, on board 4. This was the first game to finish. However, by that time our situation was looking very good. I had been pushing a clearly better ending against Becerra for quite some time, and Hungaski had just refused a draw by repetition against Martinez. While his game was very messy, his tactical savvy shone through and he took advantage of Martinez’s weak back rank with a beautiful tactical sequence starting with 33. … Qxd2!. Just before he had locked the game up, I had forced my pawns through against Becerra, leaving him helpless to stop one of them from queening.  So with these victories on boards one and two, hopefully silencing the clown known as Rufus, New England took home the USCL Championship by a score of 3-1. Obviously we were helped by a forfeit win, but the only way it would have mattered is if Galofre beat the higher-rated Chase with the black pieces and then Miami went on to win the blitz tiebreaker. Of course this is a possible scenario, but I think it would occur less than 20% of the time.

Looking back on the entire season, while some players proved to be particularly valuable, our dominance came a result of a true team effort. Nobody ever blamed each other for losing games; instead, we used those losses to motivate ourselves to fight even harder to stay in the match. Everyone was a hero in at least one match, proving to be the difference between a win and a tie. Just to give the general public an appreciation of just how useful everyone was, here is a short list of what each player did:

IM Robert Hungaski scored a massive 7/8, and though he mostly played board 2, his performance rating was higher than that of many of the top board 1’s in the league. He single handedly saved our season by grinding out a win in an ending where most would just agree a draw against one of the best performers in the history of the USCL. And, last but not least, he brought us our #1 fan, a mysterious woman named Claudia from Argentina…

IM Dave Vigorito somehow managed to find sponsors on very short notice, be an amazing manager, score 3.5/4, help us with prep, and take care of his now month-old daughter. Without him, we never would have been able to play in the first place.

IM Jan van de Mortel came through huge in his three games, only yielding a draw when playing the black pieces against the strong IM Dean Ippolito. He also was a great chauffeur for Robert when the two of them would drive up from Connecticut together, and his advice proved to be top-notch, as his opening choice helped Robert win a great game over GM Charbonneau in the quarterfinals, and in telling yours truly to treat his women better (solely in reference to sacrificing my queen twice this season…).

FM Charles Riordan did a lot of great blogging and number crunching as the assistant manager, but his contributions on the board were great as well- his only losses came to two much higher rated players.

FM Braden Bournival made solid undefeated three from four, while all the while providing moral support and comic relief.

FM Chris Chase was constantly paired against very strong players, such as the legendary IM Marc Esserman or the World Open u2400 winner Victor Shen. He held his own, making an even score against tough opposition.

NM Alex Cherniack would go in week after week and wreak havoc on board 4, remaining undefeated until the finals. His defensive skills are truly amazing- I refused to allow a repetition of moves against Lenderman in the Quarterfinals because I thought there was no way he was going to survive Ostrovskiy’s attack, but he fought it off and was even winning at the end of the game.

NM Carey Theil did not play as much as some of the other players, but he was the one who officially closed the deal on the regular season, winning in fine style against James Black to clinch our Ninth and a halfth (I’m sure that’s grammatically terrible) point from 10.

Thanks to all of our fans and sponsors for making this season so great, and be sure to check out chesscafe’s next column which will have some analysis of our games from the championship match.