The 2009 US Chess League schedule has been released and the Boston Blitz will kick off the season on Monday, August 31st, with a match against Queens Pioneers.  The match is one of three scheduled for an exciting start to the season, the other two being crunch match-ups between last year’s top four finishers in the West.

The Blitz put paid to the Pioneers championship hopes by beating them in the quarter finals after they had dominated the East for the entire regular season only for an unbelievable collapse and miracle win for Carolina in the final week of the season seeing them slip to 2nd to face the Blitz in the play-offs.

Other notable match-ups for the Blitz sees them facing the 2007 and 2008 USCL Champions, Dallas Destiny, in week 3, the 2008 East Division Champions, Carolina Cobras, in weeks 2 and 6, the 2008 West Division Champions, Miami Sharks, in week 9 and a week 10 match against bitter rivals the New Yorks Knights.

The schedule is rounded off by a rematch against Queens Pioneers in week 7 and divisional match-ups against Philadelphia Inventors in week 4, Baltimore Kingfishers in week 5 and New Jersey Knockouts in week 8.

The league has also moved to having more than one Monday night match-up and the opening match is one of four games the Blitz will play on that day throughout the regular season.  The other six will be on Wednesdays, which has been the regular match night for all of the previous seasons.

The play-offs are currently scheduled for Wednesday, November 11th, and Wednesday, November 18th, with the 2009 USCL Championship game set for Saturday, December 5th.

The complete schedule for all teams can be found at the USCL Schedule Page.

Boston Blitz’s star player from the 2008 season, Marc Esserman, shared 1st place with GM Darmen Sadvakasov at the Eastern Class Championships held in Sturbridge, MA, from March 6-8.

A fabulous last round win against New York Knights GM Alex Shabalov secured the victory.  In the previous rounds Esserman had to face three regular attendees at Blitz games, drawing with FM Paul MacIntyre in the 1st round and beating FM Alex Cherniack and David Harris.  He also drew with Philly Inventors GM Sergey Kudrin in round 3.

Blitz player Denys Shmelov finished in a tie for 3rd-4th along with Kudrin.  Shmelov beat the Knights Iryna Zenyuk in round 4 while his only loss was to Shabalov, giving the Blitz a 2-1 edge over the whole weekend in Blitz-Knights match-ups.

You can read the full Chess Life Online report by Chris Bird at http://main.uschess.org/content/view/9184/520/, which includes photos and an in-depth look at Esserman’s last round win against Shabalov.

The USCL has awarded Blogger of the Year to our own Chris Bird for his incredible efforts producing the team’s home web site.

Congratulations!!

The article on the USCL website can be read here http://usclnews.blogspot.com/2008/12/blogger-of-year.html

Effective immediately Jorge Sammour-Hasbun is now the Manager of the Boston Blitz. Jorge will handle all player personnel decisions henceforth, including team makeup and lineup determination. Jorge has been acting in this capacity unofficially since the 2008 playoffs started.

Matt Phelps will move to Assistant Manager and continue to take care of all the logistical and technical considerations. “I would like to thank Mark LaRocca, whom I’m replacing, for his time as Assistant Manager. His help with relaying, game analysis articles, etc. has been invaluable and I hope it continues. It was a great comfort to know he was around every week,” said Phelps. “I also would like to thank Chris Bird who volunteered countless hours running the most awesome website in the USCL, Boston-Blitz.com. And I can’t forget Phillip Nutzman, our official TD, ultra-reliable board two relayer and laptop lugging helper. Thanks Nut-man!”

“The Blitz also want to thank the USCL sponsors PokerStars.com, and the Massachusetts Chess Association for their generous team sponsorship. Many others contributed to the team; see the list of “Blitz Buddies” and “Blitz Backers” on the team’s home page. Most of all, thanks to all the fans who watched, blogged, critisized (!), and cheered us on.”

Professional photographer and “Blitz Buddy” Tony Cortizas, Jr. was at the USCL Championship game and took a boat load of photographs which he has kindly made available for everyone to see.

Thanks Tony!

Blitz Tie-Breaks

Once again the Boston Blitz were about to close their hands on the USCL Championship only to have some last minute drama snatch it from their grasp.  After GM Larry Christiansen and Marc Esserman had put the Blitz up 2-0, only half-point was needed from the other two games to bring the Championship up north for the first time.  Unfortunately for the Blitz IM Davorin Kuljasevic and WFM Bayaraa Zorigt, arguably the heroes for the Destiny throughout the entire season, managed to complete a clean sweep for the players with the white pieces and sent the game into the blitz tie-break system.

Many people thought the Blitz would have the edge if the match came this far but then they also thought that in last year’s Championship too.  As the players were eliminated one by one it was IM Davorin Kuljasevic who cemented his place in Destiny folklore as he dispatched Esserman, Jorge Sammour-Hasbun and finally Christiansen for the Destiny to retain their status as Champions of the USCL and become the first ever team to win it in two consecutive seasons.

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Check out our USCL Championship photo gallery from the Boston Blitz site.

Boston Blitz vs Dallas Destiny
Saturday, December 6, 3:00 pm

The Boston Blitz and the Dallas Destiny will once again meet in the USCL Championship match with memories of last year’s epic encounter, which Dallas eventually won on the final tie-break game, still fresh in most of the player’s minds.

Last year’s Championship came down to one miserable blunder, no doubt caused by fatigue as the final tie-break game was been played at 2:00 am Boston time.  Despite the excitement of the match, it was a lousy way from Boston’s perspective for a whole season’s sweat and toil to go unrewarded although some will argue that it maybe shouldn’t have even reached the tie-breaks.  However, this year there will be no such excuse for Boston as the match has been moved to the weekend with a much more reasonable start time of 3:00 pm.

Both teams have walked remarkably similar paths to reach the final match of the season.  Both finished third in their respective divisions and both overcame draw odds in the quarter-finals and the semi-finals.  The ratings for the line-ups that have been chosen to battle it out are just one point apart, 2424 to 2423 in Boston’s favor.

Similar paths yes, but the make up of each team is like night and day.  Boston employs the top heavy approach with very strong players manning boards one and two and fitting in players as necessary on the lower boards.  It helps that one of them is severely under-rated although last year it could be argued they had two such players.  Dallas has a more balanced line-up with no GMs on their roster but on each board they give themselves a fighting chance, especially with the players on the lower boards.  Remember that no team that has won any of the previous three USCL Championships have had a GM on their roster.

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The USCL Finals will take place Saturday, December 6th at 3:00 PM in the Phillips Auditorium at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. This is in the same complex, but a different room than our usual playing site. Directions to the CfA can be found at http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/events/directions.html.

A map of the complex, with directions from the usual room is here.

See you there!

Boston chokes out the Cobras after a tough struggle.

How many times have you heard the expression “better to be good than lucky?”  Well, after last Wednesday’s Semi-Final action perhaps the converse couldn’t be more true as it relates to the win that propelled us into the USCL Finals.  To say that the Boston Blitz were very fortunate would be an understatement – for a large part of the match we were worse or losing on every single board!

Going into the match we couldn’t help but feel very confident in our chances despite Carolina holding the “Draw Odds.”  How could we not?  We have never lost to Carolina in our history, in fact we gave them a lot of good beatings over the years, including one this year, 3-1 in week 2.  Before the playoffs began, I called Carolina “a very weak team” and predicted they would lose to NY.  Although they proved me wrong, I can at least take solace in the fact that ultimately I was the one most responsible for their elimination.

Before the match, Jorge and I brainstormed that a draw in my game should be enough to win the match, given what we perceived to be a big edge on board 2 and an edge on 3.  I was also able to guess correctly what kind of opening Jones would choose.  Looking at his games, a Reti Defense seemed likely because it usually leads to quiet strategical and theoretically-light type of positions where the the player who thinks he is stronger can try to outmaneuver his opponent.  Carolina chose white on boards 2 and 4, likely to add more firepower to Jones who was already a favorite here with the the expectation that he will take me down, also Zaikov (who should change his last name to Huidini ) was given white to help make up for the 200 points he was missing.

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