[For a preview of the Northwest Chess article and a link to the cross table, read the complete article on this year’s tournament on our Dave Collyer Memorial page.}
The 29th Dave Collyer Memorial tournament was “an instant classic” in the language of ESPN and will be remembered for numerous hard-fought games and spectacular results from seriously underrated newcomers. Although many newcomers shined, first place still went to IM John Donaldson who won the tournament once more with a perfect 5.0 score.
The biggest story of the event was 10-year-old Finnegan Flavin of Wenatchee. He entered the tourney with a rating of but 887 and raised it 420 points to 1307 before returning home. Wow. The youngster finished with 4.5 to tie for second place overall with Dave Rowles. In addition, Finnegan won both of the Jim Waugh biggest upset prizes. He was held to a second-round draw by Jeremy Younker, who in his youth had quite a reputation himself for upsetting higher rated adult opponents. Finnegan had the largest upset in the first round and kept raising the bar each succeeding round before defeating the legendary Viktors Pupols on board 3 in the final round.
He had lots of competition for those prizes. Newcomer Owen McDevitt, a graduate student at WSU, sported a provisional rating of 663 entering the event and left with a provisional rating of 1070 after scoring 4.0, including a 2-1 record against class A players in the final three rounds. WSU freshman Brian Lee won his first four games before battling Donaldson on board one with the tournament title at stake.
There were numerous class prize winners. The Expert prize was shared by David Arganian and Michael Cambareri with 4.0 scores. Brian Lee, Steve Merwin (who lost to Donaldson in round 4), and Jeremy Younker all scored 4.0 to win the class A prizes. A score of 3.5 result in a three-way tie for the class B prizes among Neal Bonrud, Griffin Herr, and Andrew Rankin. Niall McKenzie won the class C prize with a similar 3.5 score, while four players shared the second prizes with 3.0 scores: Jess Driscoll, Tayseer Khalil, Murlin Varner, and Jeremy Wohl. Casey Bruner, who recently returned to chess, was first in class D with a score of 2.5; second place in the class was shared by Patrick Kirlin and Arnav Wadikar with 2.0 scores. The class E/unrated category was won by McDevitt with his 4.0 score, while Garrett Thompson finished second at 3.0 in his first tournament.
Congratulations to all of the prize winners and to each of the 72 entrants who made this an entertaining tournament to watch.