Welcome to “Manager’s Musings” on Boston-Blitz.com where I, Matt Phelps, the manager and team captain of the Blitz write about the team’s exploits from my unique perspective.

Week one of the Blitz’s third season is behind us after a tense close match with the Seattle Sluggers. Much has been written, by better chess minds than mine, about the games. I’ll leave the game analysis to those who don’t hang knights in the opening. For this article, I’ll cover events during the off-season.

Three of last year’s team members couldn’t return for the ’07 season; both Charles Riordan and Steven Winer are now in law school so they have a whole new set of arcane minutia to memorize. IM Igor Foygel has commitments on Wednesday nights this year, so he’s out also. Fortunately, the new “alternates” rule in the USCL allows me to tap Riordan and Foygel for a couple of matches this year, so they are still “on the team.” This left three spots to fill. I’ve been besieged with requests to join the team over the last several months, so the task was not an easy one. In fact I lobbied the USCL governing body (Greg) to increase the team rosters by two to try and accommodate them, but it was not to be.

Jorge Sammour-Hasbun (nee Jorge Zamora Jr.) has recently returned to a much more active chess career after an incredible Junior run in the ’90s. This, coupled with his massive success in on-line play (e.g. the winner of the 2007 on-line Dos Hermanas tournament), made the decision easy. Another GM strength player was now on the team.

One trend the Blitz didn’t partake in was having young underrated players on the lower boards. This deficiency was nicely removed with the additions of high schooler Chris Williams whose October ’06 rating
was 2175, but just recently topped 2300 USCF. Likewise, 21 year-old Denys Shmelov was 2251 in Oct. ’06 and recently has come within a few points of 2400!

The USCL allows each team to pick any official rating list from Oct. ’06 through August ’07. Clearly with the ratings mentioned above, which list to use became a no-brainer; which is a good thing for those of us who hang knights in the opening.

The latter additions came through big time in our week one match, with Chris winning on board four while Denys held his higher rated opponent to a draw.

Next match marks the debut of our third off-season acquisition as Sammour-Hasbun takes on Queens’s FM Jake Kleiman. Let’s hope that move works out as well as the other two!