Author: kmkorsmo

Thanks to the efforts of club member Chris Bruceri, two new concrete chess tables have been added to Riverfront Park in the shadow of the iconic Red Wagon. Chris, on behalf of the Greater Spokane (high school) Chess League, successfully obtained a grant for the tables from the park system’s foundation.

Bring your pieces down to the park and enjoy our favorite game in the comfort of the park!

Photo compliments of Chris Bruceri.

A dozen players took part in a four round g/15 event June 26th. After taking a first round bye, Joe Ong won his final three games to top the field with a 3.5 score. Michael Cambareri and Ken Erickson scored 3.0 to finish second. Kevin Korsmo and Vibi Varghese finished 2.5 to win the under 1600 prize. Khai Le and Michael Michalak (2.0) tied for the under 1400 prize.

The USCF cross table link: US Chess MSA – Cross Table for 626 QUICK (Event 202506263582)

The club’s annual meeting on June 5 saw a shuffling of officers for the next year. Ben Shedlock takes over as president, while Michael Cambareri serves as vice president and Cam Leslie is now the club’s secretary. Craig Moore replaces Kevin Korsmo as treasurer.

Michael Cambareri scored a perfect 5.0 to win the club’s Spring Champioonship. Second place was shared by five players with 3.5 scores. The tournament kicked off Thursday, April 24 with two dozen contenders and ran through through May 22. This 24-player field was well distributed, with four Expert/A-Class players, eight B-Class players, 9 C-/D-Class players, and three F-Class players.

A couple of Swiss surprises rankled the first round results. Newcomer Josh Maulolo (1220 (p)) played to a draw against Joe Ong, achieving a 200+ rating point upset. Nick Guerra, with a rating below 1000, scored an even more impressive result, notching a draw versus B-Class player Craig Moore. A third game looked headed for a split result when the chronically underrated C-Class player Khai Le battled third seed Nikolay Bulakh to a drawish endgame, with a rook and a bishop halting the progress of Bulakh’s two pawns supported by a lone rook. In the end, Bulakh’s patient and precise play slowly ramped up the pressure, and Le resigned when the conversion became inevitable.

The USCF cross table link: US Chess MSA – Cross Table for SPRING CHAMPIONSHIP 2025 (Event 202505227842)

Spokane Chess Club is excited to announce its first collaboration with Blitz & Blunders! For event details, see the Blitz & Blunders website here: https://www.blitzandblunders.org/events/jntthhc4lusu31md8ns10iclogmf2m

Blitz & Blunders is a great recent addition to the chess scene in Spokane. Featuring casual events in social environments like coffee shops, breweries, and pizzerias, they are offering Spokanites an easy, no-pressure way to get hooked on chess. Many of the Spokane Chess Club regulars have attended these events in the past. The idea behind our first collaboration is to demonstrate the diverse opportunities for chess play in Spokane, with Spokane Chess Club offering classic, long time control events and Blitz & Blunders creating new opportunities for relaxed play. Spokane has something for everyone in chess!

The 2025 Taxing Quads are in the books, with upsets putting newer or infrequent players in the top half of the cross tables and toppling pre-event favorites.

Twenty-two players entered the 2025 edition of this ever-popular event, one of our three annual quad events (with the Ajeeb Quads coming in August, followed by the Turkey Quads in November). To accommodate this number indivisible by four, a 6-player mini-Swiss was added to the four top quads. 

Quad A featured three Class A players and one high Class B player, John Frostad. Frostad managed a draw against Nikolay Bulakh and a win against Ben Patterson to secure third place and knock on the Class A door with a post-event rating of 1797. Bulakh scored an upset himself, beating Michael Cambareri in the final round to take the Quad in decisive fashion.

In Quad B, players separated by just 95 pre-event rating points sorted to opposite ends of the results bell curve, with the top two players, Walter van Heemstede Obelt and Joe Ong  scoring 3 and 2 points respectively, with the bottom half of the quad splitting a point in the first round. As a result, Walter added a shocking 73 points to his post-event rating. His clean sweep was the best result of the Quad groups.

In Quad C, Khai Le notched an impressive tie for second place with Craig Moore. Khai entered the event a 150-point underdog against Moore, the top rated player in the group. 

In Quad D, Omar Embaby had the best event performance behind Walter VHO. Avoiding losses and scoring 2.5 points gave him a post-event rating boost of 96 points (provisional). Michael Michalak scored a draw against Embaby, avoiding a loss in time pressure to take second place. His post-event rating of 1398 puts him just below Class C.

Karl Milton posted the third unblemished performance of the event, joining Walter VHO and Omar Embaby. His 3.0 took the mini-Swiss running away, taking him from second-highest rated pre-event to highest post-event. The pressure on higher ranked players to convert their advantages is intense, and Karl  justified his ranking, beating Jim Burney, his rival for the top spot, in a head-to-head final round match-up.

February 21-28 saw the Club experiment with a new two-round class-based championship format.. The first round put players in class pairings, and the second round advanced the top half of each group to a winner’s bracket.

The first round featured a mini-swiss with some of the club’s A &.B players, with the exception of Asa Wadden, whose provional rating over his first 3 tournaments earned him a promotion to the upper level group. Matthew Goodale pulled the upset, dropping only a half point against Keith Brownlee on his way to a 2.5-point, clear win. Michael Cambareri and Dave Rowles shared the second and third spots. Goodale, Cambareri, and Rowles advanced to the winner’s bracket.

The bottom group featured a quad with Shedlock, Peterson, Michalak, and Lindquist. Michalak overcame the odds to take out top-seeded Shedlock in a coolly played endgame while down on time, earning him a berth in the winner’s bracket.

On the 28th, In the winner’s bracket were Cambareri, Rowles, Goodale, Shedlock, and Michalak advancing from the class groups, and Cam Leslie joining this week to round out the group. The natural order reasserted itself, with Cambareri and Rowles getting back on top of Goodale with 2.5 points each. Shedlock won an upset against Leslie in the first round, the only game won by someone from the first week’s lower bracket.

Linus Wannamaker, a ninth grader, won the second Inland Classic with a score of 4.5. He also garnered the largest upset prize by defeating IM John Donaldson in round 3. Linus, Idaho’s representative to the Denker tournament of high school champions, was seeded 11th in the event!. Way to go!!

Second place (4.0) was shared by six players: John Donaldson, Eric Billaux (the Expert prize winner), class A winners Drew Bunch, Michael Cambareri, and Ken Erickson, and class B winner Daniel Bowers. There were numerous other prize winners. Second place in class B with 3.5 scores was shared by Eshan Reddy, Jim Skovron, and Vibi Varghese. The two class C prizes were split by 8 (!!!) players with 2.5 scores: Brandon Arensmeyer, Tilly Backstrom, Steve Brendemihl, Khai Le, Ben Legard, Pat Perry, Declan Pham, and Chase Rands. Brandon also scored the second biggest upset prize! Class D/under/unrated was won by Brock Swope (3.0), while second place was shared by newcomer Austin Ashcroft, Andrew Johnsen, and Eric Spletstoser with 2.5 scores.

Congratulations to all of the winners! A complete story is now posted on the Inland Classic page (link above).

The USCF cross table link: US Chess MSA – Cross Table for INLAND CLASSIC 2- INLAND CLASSIC 2 (Event 202502237542)

Terrible news arrived the other night that Ted Baker had unexpectely passed away on Friday, February 7 at age 74. Ted showed up at club in November 2004, played in his first tournament, and then immediately became one of our indispensable members. He served as club Secretary for many years and was a TD or assistant for over 300 sections of Thursday night and weekend events over the next 20 years. His quiet nature probably obscured some of his most important contributions to the club, but Ted had his hand in the background (at least) of most club activities the past two decades. He didn’t wait to be asked for help, but constantly volunteered before there was any request for assistance. He and his wife Monique Kolonko were responsible for securing the St. Anne’s Children’s Center for the Collyer tournament. That venue was excellent — probably the best Collyer location we ever had — and it was hard when the facility was renovated in a manner that left it unusable for us. For those of you with a basketball bent, he was one of the ultimate “glue guys” who hold a team together — not all of his contributions make the reported statistical categories, but they are vital for a winning team.

Ted also traveled to Missoula most years for the Turkey Open. He had dozens of chess friends here and many in Montana. At his request, there will be no services, so I am hoping that his friends who want to remember him here submit a comment. I will approve and post them as fast as I can!

Ted’s Hennessey Funeral Home tribute link: Tribute for William Theodore Baker | Hennessey Funeral Home & Crematory

Thirty years after his last Winter Championship title in 1995 (but also having won the past two Fall Championships), Dave Rowles is again King of the cold weather chess season. Dave dispatched Ben Legard, who already had two Expert scalps this event, early in the final round to score 4.5 and finish a half game ahead of three players. — Mathew Buchanan, Michael Cambareri, and Asa Wadden. Michael’s 4.0 score won the Expert/A category prize, while Mathew and Asa won both prizes in the E/unrated category. It was an unusual event in that regard, with the top two boards scoring only four points, and the lower half of the draw presenting several players with winning scores and multiple upset victories in every round.

There were lots of other prize winners. The Class B prizes were split by John Frostad, Matt Goodale, Walter van Heemstede, and Vibi Varghese. Ben Legard claimed the Class C prize with his 3.5 score, and Jeremy Burnett’s 3.0 netted him the second place category prize. Ethan Rowe (3.0) won the class D category, and Khai Le (2.0) claimed the second category prize.

The USCF cross table link: US Chess MSA – Cross Table for 25 WINTER CHAMPIONSHIP (Event 202502130922)

Round 4 recap: 

When the dust settled on round four, two players top the 28 player field with 3.5 scores — club veteran Dave Rowles, the fourth seed, and recent high school grad Ben Legard, the sixteenth seed. Rowles stopped John Frostad on board 2, while Cam Leslie defeated the only undefeated player, Vibi Varghese, on board 1. Legard, however, had an amazing day. He started out the day defeating top seed Leslie, in a late makeup game from round three, and then defeated second seed Antonious Raelund in the evening to make it two Expert scalps in one day! That is likely a first for a club championship event!

Round 3 recap:

Vibi Varghese topped Michael Cambareri on board one and became the only perfect score after three rounds of the Winter Championship. The other perfect scores met on board two, where Matt Goodale and Dave Rowles battled in a knight and pawn endgame to a draw with each player having less than 25 seconds remaining. It was an exciting end to a round that featured lots of action!

Round 2 recap:

Two more players entered the Winter Championship in round two, pushing the tally to 28. As with the first round, there were several upsets. This time, the upsets claimed the top two boards. On board 1, Walter van Heemstede Obelt drew with Cam Leslie who, despite a huge time deficit was able to set up a mating net while under severe attack and force Walter to draw by repetition. On board 2, Matt Goodale upended Antonius Raelund. The other upset of the night saw Jim Burney down Craig Moore. There are only four perfect scores after two rounds!

Round 1 recap: The always popular Winter Championship began its five-week run on January 9 with 26 players taking part in the g/90 (d5) event. There were two first round upsets, and several talented first-time players will make this a strongly contested event.