Other than the upcoming SPICE Cup, when was the last time a 10 player International round robin invitational tournament in the US a category 12 or stronger? Can you name that tournament? Can you name all the players?
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San Antonio about 72. I think Karpov played and won. hmmmm was Ken Smith a local entry??
Lajos Portisch, Tigran Petrosian, and Anatoly Kapov shared first place in the 1972 Church’s Fried Chicken First International Chess Tournament. The event took place at the Hotel Hilton Palacio del Rio in San Antonio, Texas from November 19th – December 10th. The tournament featured a talented field of 16 players and included the likes of Svetozar Gligoric, Bent Larsen, Paul Keres, and Henrique Mecking.
After the first 10 rounds of completed play, Keres (the oldest player in the tournament) was in a tie for first place with the young phenom Karpov at 8 points apiece. They were a full point and a half ahead of their closest competitors, as Portisch, Petrosian, and Larsen were knotted up at 6 1/2 points each.
Keres then took a loss in the 11th round to Portisch, while Karpov played to a drawn game with Larry Evans. Keres would go on to struggle in the remaining rounds and settle for a fifth place finish. Going into the final round, Petrosian had climbed his way back into the tournament and was tied for first place with Karpov at 10 points apiece. Portisch was right behind them, trailing by only a half point.
Karpov and Petrosian disappointingly settled for quick draws (both with the White pieces) in each of their respective final games; Karpov with a 9-move draw against Mecking and Petrosian with a 10-move draw against Duncan Suttles. Portisch spoiled their little party by battling to a 35-move victory over Larsen in one of the best games of the tournament and earned a share of the first place prize.
On a side note, World Champion Bobby Fischer attended the tournament as an observer. He claimed that the prize money was insufficient for his participation, but stated that the tournament playing conditions and facilities would have been to his satisfaction.
Can I have the prize without answering difficult question? Please.
The Imre Konig Memorial held in San Francisco in 2002 was a category 12 tournament.
From the Mechanics Institute newsletter archives at:
http://www.chessclub.org/OldNews02.html
The Imre Konig Memorial starts a week from today, Wednesday, September 4 at 11 AM. Rounds are daily except the free days which are being held on September 6,10 and 13. The event has been cut back from 12 to 10 players as Larry Christiansen and Lubomir Ftacnik were forced to withdraw for personal reasons. Larry will be with the tournament in spirit, if not in person, as he has donated $500 to the tournament. I don’t know the last time a reigning US Champion has done that. Thanks Larry!
The field will consist of GMs Suat Atalik, Alexander Baburin, Walter Browne, Nick DeFirmian, John Fedorowicz, Yuri Shulman, Alex Wojtkiewicz and Alex Yermolinsky plus America’s top two young players IM Varuzhan Akobian and IM Hikaru Nakamura. The prize fund for the category 12 (2538 FIDE average) will be $9,450 with $9,050 in place prizes and Oscar Samuels Best Game Prize $200 and Henry Gross Best Game Prize $200 made possible by Coblentz, Patch, Duffy & Bass. Samuels was MI Champion twice in the 1890s, while Gross was a standard bearer for Northern California chess for over fifty years. The two IMs will not only be competing for prize money. They will also both be trying to make their second GM norm, which for this event is 5 1/2 points.
and the result:
The lowest rated player in the Imre Konig Memorial, 18-year-old Varuzhan Akobian of Glendale, won the event and made a Grandmaster norm! Konig, who was a great supporter of promising players, would have been doubly pleased as the other young talent in the event, IM Hikaru Nakamura, narrowly missed his second GM norm in tying for second.
The 1996 US Championship was a 14-player invitational that was one of the strongest held in the U.S. It wasn’t an ‘international’ invitational, though.
Yermolinsky won the championship that year with 9/13, a point ahead of a very strong field:
Yermolinsky, Kaidanov, Gulko, Gurevich, Ivanov(A) , Shabalov, Alburt, Dzindzichashvili, Benjami, Christiansen, DeFirmian, Shaked, Khmelnitsky, and Ivanov(I)
The average USCF rating was in the 2630’s, but I don’t know what the FIDE average would have been.
I would guess the The Chess-in-the-Schools International Tournament which was held from March 21 to April 2 of 1996. I am hoping you specified it be 10 players as a minimum since this tournament included 12 players.
I have fond memories of this event as I was there for a few of the rounds relaying moves to the ICC. I recall after Viktor Korchnoi lost a better position against GM Wolff on time he was asked for his autograph. He very graciously signed the book before leaving the room after a short post mortem. This incident is in sharp contrast to the belligerent manner in which he is often described in the press.
The players were GM Joel Benjamin, GM Michael Adams, GM Viktor Korchnoi, GM Ivan Sokolov, GM Roman Dzindzichashvili, GM Valery Salov, GM Jaime Sunye-Neto, GM Maurice Ashley, IM Joshua Waitzkin, GM Nick Defirmian, GM Patrick Wolff, GM Gregory Serper.
More details are can be found here – > http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D07EED71139F935A25757C0A960958260