Corvallis Versus Eugene

Dan Dalthorp organized a Corvallis (& Albany) versus Eugene match that happened yesterday. 8 players from up here went down and played 10 players from Eugene that showed up. I had never played in something like this, so the format was strange to me, but it made good sense. It was a one day event with 3 rounds. The top 3 players from Eugene played the top 3 from Corvallis. The next 3 played the next 3. For the top 2 sections it was a G/90, round robin event. So you would play the 3 players in your section from the other town. Because of the uneven geographic distribution below that (4 v 2), the rest of the players just played a 3 round swiss.

This meant that you got to play up the rivalry so to speak, and play people of approximately the same skill level as you. The Corvallis/Albany contingent consisted of David Wen, Matt Dalthorp, Bryant Brownell, Harry Demarest, myself, Dan Rogers, Stan Taylor, and Dan Dalthorp. I can't remember all the opponents names sadly, but if I can find a link to the official page, I'll update this.

I had to take a bye for the 3rd round, so I only got to play 2 of my 3 sectional Jack and Jason, Ivan was the player I missed battling.

The first round was against Jason Ellis, a strong player who had a bad blunder in the opening and then battled valiantly the rest of the game. He was rated ~1850, and played like it for 64 of the 66 moves.

So, as you can see, my opponent made a bad blunder in the opening, and then fought bravely for 60 moves before I was able to dodge all his threats and eventually checkmate him.

edit: here is a link to the page where it was organized. http://oscf.org/corvallis-vs-eugene/