A Young Master Remembered

The Billy Colias Memorial Tournament

Billy Colias was a brilliant, young chess master from Munster, Indiana, who was stricken with cancer and died tragically in his twenties. That was 1993, but the passage of time hasn’t dimmed his memory here in the Midwest, where he’s honored each year with The Billy Colias Memorial Master Invitational Tournament. It’s become quite a tradition: “the best event” on the Illinois chess calendar, according to NM Jon Burgess.

This year’s tournament took place last weekend at IM Angelo Young’s Touch Move Chess Center. The mostly-masters event brought together a dozen of the region’s top chess players: FM (FIDE Master) Pete Bereolos, NM (National Master) Jon Burgess, Expert Geoffrey Caveney, FM Albert Chow, FM James Dean, NM Pete Karagianis, NM Tim McEntee, Expert Gopal Menon, Expert Adam Strunk, NM Steve Tennant, NM Ken Wallach, and NM Len Weber.

Ken Wallach and Steve Tennant review a game

A number of these guys knew Billy, some of them well. I understand, for example, that Pete Bereolos was a Munster schoolmate of Billy’s and came up with him in the ranks of chess. That could help explain why Pete played so well, posting four victories in the five-game round-robin meet (a record matched by Jim Dean).

The big news of the weekend, though, was Adam Strunk, a junior player from the South Suburbs, the third player to post the tournament’s top score of 4.0/5.0. He beat NMs Burgess and Tennant and drew against FM Bereolos and NM Karagianis. I don’t know much about Adam, except that he is a Warren Chess Scholar, which means he was in high school this past school year. Andi Rosen, who directs the Warren program, says Adam only started playing serious chess a few years ago.

He’s certainly making up for lost time. Adam started the tournament with a rating of 2078, but that will certainly go up. “His performance rating from this event was 2456,” said Tournament Director Glenn Panner.

The crosstable’s here, thanks to Glenn’s prompt reporting.

For helping to make the weekend a success, Glenn made a point of thanking IM Angelo Young for hosting the tournament and Robert Loncarevic and Tim McEntee, who along with Glenn himself sponsored the meet. Sevan Muradian of the North American Chess Association provided some gorgeous chess sets.

Though he moved to New York and climbed onto the national stage in his last years—managing the famous Manhattan Chess Club, collaborating on chess books with prolific chess author FM Eric Schiller—Colias appears never to have forgotten his Midwestern roots. One of the last rated tournaments in which he played, in fact, was right here on the South Side, at Tom Fineberg’s Tuley Park Chess Club. He came in first.

Here’s a game in which Colias beat the famous Grand Master Roman Dzindzichashvili. If you want more, pick up the tribute book Billy Colias: Midwest Master. It’s got about a hundred of his best games.

Miscellanea: Congratulations to Lamarr Wilson for lasting eleven days in his juice fast. Here’s his wrap-up on the ordeal. . . . Vince Hart not only got a victory in a recent simul against a Russian Candidate Master; he also got some valuable publicity for chess in the Mt. Prospect Times. . . . Does chess teach kids lessons of value beyond the game itself? According to Dr. Alexey Root, former U.S. Women’s Champion, it does (hat tip: Brad). . . . Sad news from Westchester County, N.Y., where a local paper reports that veteran chess player Jerome Kurtzberg was killed in a car accident last Friday. The Journal News said that Mr. Kurtzberg became a chess master in 1981. Even at 76 he was an active tournament player and maintained an expert rating. Our condolences to his friends and family.

Vicary is Brilliant

Best game in women’s championship wins prize

You don’t hear the word “brilliancy” in everyday usage, but in chess the word has a popular and specific meaning, referring to a game that is, well . . . brilliant. International Master Jeremy Silman defines brilliancy as “A game that contains a very deep strategic concept, a beautiful combination or an original plan.” Grandmaster Yasser Seirawan has published an entire book of brilliancies, plural.

And sometimes, when you play a brilliancy, your achievement is duly recognized, as it was for Woman FIDE Master Elizabeth Vicary, a competitor in the recently concluded U.S. Women’s Championship in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Elizabeth didn’t win the tournament—Irina Krush did that—but thanks to a special prize from the Web site Goddesschess.com, Ms. Vicary won $300 for a thrilling game against Woman Grandmaster Camilla Baginskaite, in which she defeated the higher rated player with the black pieces, playing the Bogo-Indian Defense. (I confess I don’t know that opening well, though I have always liked the sound of it. It’s named for the late Grandmaster Efim Bogoljubov, who played it frequently.)

It was an exciting game. One commenter on Mig Greengard’s Daily Dirt blog called it “a kitchen-sink attack . . . Thrilling to watch - I was on edge for the final 10 moves or more.”

Sacking the Exchange
I haven’t seen the game annotated anywhere, but Elizabeth herself comments on it in a blog post at the USCF site. Note that she likes “sacking the exchange,” as she does with 21...Rxb4, allowing her rook to be captured, for which she gets only a knight and a pawn in return. The term refers to giving up your rook for a minor piece, the intention being to get some kind of compensation for the sacrifice, such as a positional advantage or a better attack. See what GM Robert Byrne had to say about it 20 years ago.

As you may know, great chess players are not compensated the way rock stars and major-league ballplayers are. The figure above is not a typo; $300 is what you get for a brilliant chess game. Barely enough to make a dent in Elizabeth’s stay at the Stillwater Quality Inn during the tournament, though I guess it’s better than a poke in the eye with a stick.

Play through the game, and enjoy. Congratulations, Elizabeth.

Endgame: Congratulations to Eric Rosen for winning the recent blitz tournament at Evanston Chess and to Vince Hart for taking first place in the club’s “economy open.” Vince blogs about his chess adventures occasionally (hat tip: Chessdad64), so maybe we can expect some commentary on this tournament, if he is so moved. . . . Congratulations to Ron Washington and the other woodpushers at the North Avenue Chess Pavilion, who got some high-profile coverage last week from the Chicago Reader, in addition to our recent post. The Reader's Ted Cox did a nice job on the article, despite having run smack up against the pavilion's top two players in his first encounter with chess in many years.