Life Master Brian Wall's Commentary on my game from 29th North American FIDE Open

Stillwater Oklahoma! The home of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, near many wildcat local oil rigs, and most importantly, the home of the best pair of tournament directors and chess patrons this country has ever had in Jim & Frank Berry  who hosted the annual North American FIDE Open in Stillwater this year over the Memorial Day weekend. Brian Wall, a veteran Colorado State Champion many times over (and a great coach I might add) and I traveled by car (i had to do most of the driving as Brian had lost his license at the time) from Denver to Stillwater. After a few hours drive into Kansas Brian decided that we needed to make a short detour in Lindsborg Kansas at 10 at night, just to see the Karpov Chess Academy as both of us had played tournaments there in past years. You would never think something like this could happen in a sleepy small town like Lindsborg. Once we found the place in the downtown area, Brian asked me to make a sharp J-turn in the middle of the main street right in front of City Hall to park in front of the Chess Academy, so he would not be troubled by crossing the street. Of course, as luck would have it, I found myself shortly thereafter getting a warning ticket from the only local cop on duty at the time who chastized me for ignoring a local ordinance (there was a sign hidden by some bushes near City Hall across the street from the Academy) outlawing J-turns on Main Street!. Finally, after 14 hours of driving we made it safe and sound to Stillwater. The Berry brothers have a passion for chess and it could be seen right after entering the playing area of the hotel to register for the tournament (a grueling 10 round Swiss...with two days having 3 rounds to play...at G/90 30s delay). The hall was decorated with more chess memorabilia, archived scoresheets from past matches, posters from famous world championships, pictures galore, and archives of past issues of chess magazines that could keep you so busy that you could almost forget why you where standing in the registration line for the tournament in the first place! The Berry's also hosted a 'pizza party' on Saturday afternoon for all of the players, bringing in about 25-30 pizzas to ensure the players were well fed and ready to do battle in their 3rd round of that day! The local players were very friendly and welcoming to us out-of-state ers.

But I digress.....One game I did play, Life Master Brian Wall made a commentary and some of the funniest annotations I have ever read. It is posted in his Yahoo group (http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/BrianWallChess/) and I am reposting it here for your enjoyment:

http://www.taom.com/pipermail/brianwall-chesslist/2010-June/004307.html

or

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/BrianWallChess/message/5744