Canadian Open - Day 9

The final round saw exciting battles on the top 7 boards to decide who would be the Canadian Open Champion.

1 GM Alexei Shirov (6.5) - GM Eugene Perelshteyn (6.5) (0.5 - 0.5)

2 IM Irina Krush (6.5) - GM Michael Adams (6.5) (0.5 - 0.5)

3 IM Edward Porper (6.5) - GM Surya Ganguly (6.5) (1 - 0)

4 FM Theo Hommeles (6.5) - GM Mark Bluvshtein (6.5) (0 - 1)

5 FM Jonathan Tayar (6.5) - GM Xue Zhao (6) (0.5 - 0.5)

6 FM John C Yoos (6) - FM Eric Hansen (6) (1 - 0)

7 Victor Plotkin (6)- GM Hua Ni (5.5) (0 - 1)

So in the end it is Canadian GM Bluvshtein and new Edmontonian IM Proper who are 2009 Canadian Open Champions!!!

I played former CFC Prez, and new Treasurer, Maurice Smith and my game included two bad mistakes by me. I played the Sicilian and blitzed out the first dozen moves rather quickly even though we varied from the main theory quite early. I could have won a pawn at this point but played the wrong move so we remained quite even. Then I gradually took control and had a dominating position when I made one of my worst blunders. I wasn’t even thinking about what he might be threatening and moved my king to f1 and allowed him to capture on f2 with a check and fork my bishop. It should have cost me the game but he couldn’t find a way to win. He gave up his bishop to try to get a mate with the two rooks but when that wasn’t possible he conceded a draw. If I was him I would have played on because he definitely could have won a pawn or two and then pressed for a win.

In the tournament as a whole, my performance was horrible (Rp=1718) and I should drop about 50 points based on my results. Two of my opponents were provisionally rated so the actual numbers might be slightly different. I will probably make an entry later in more detail later on my mistakes.

Overall the quality of the tournament was excellent and the organizers should be very proud. Everything went off without a hitch, or at least that’s how it seemed to an average player like me. The rounds started on time; the facility was excellent, and all the players behaved with sportsmanship. It has been over 20 years since I last participated in a Canadian Open and even though I didn’t perform well, I enjoyed myself, and might consider doing it again.