From Saturday, February 17th through Monday February 19th, a record number of 186 chess players, organized in six rating-based sections, competed in the 2018 Hart House Reading Week Open!
Hart House Chess Club was the host of this exciting and huge Open Tournament, which probably set a new record for Toronto chess tournaments in recent years! Canadian as well as International chess enthusiasts of all ages and skill levels packed the majestic Great Hall and the proud winners shared the very generous prizes, in the total amount of over $7,000!
Most credit for this success goes undoubtedly to Alex Ferreira, the amazing Tournament Director! Alex has been the soul of the Reading Week Open for over a decade and his hard and dedicated efforts have elevated this Open Tournament to one of the most celebrated chess events in all of Canada! Just like in the Holidays Open, Alex ran the Reading Week tournament with a team of formidable colleagues, each of whom is also worthy of some high praise!
In spite of the big number of participants and the many different sections, which resulted in huge workload, Tyler Longo, the Chief Arbiter of the Tournament, administered the pairings, the results and the standings of each round flawlessly. Chris Knox, the omnipresent Secretary/President of Hart House Chess Club, coordinated everybody’s efforts, making sure that the tournament would indeed be a great success. Peter Vuong, our Club’s External Events Co-ordinator, handled the challenging processes of registration and fee-payment with remarkable professionalism. Tasked with advertising, promoting and reporting on the tournament info, our Club’s Director of Communications, Panayoti Tsialas, offered a beautifully designed tournament poster and a rich gallery of pictures and videos. As for our Club Treasurer, Jimmy Bartha, he dealt very successfully with the financial accounting of the tournament. Finally, on every single day of the tournament, our longtime volunteer and U of T alumnus, Andrew MacMillan, was the first one to arrive and the last one to leave the playing hall, bringing in two fully-loaded carts of chess materials, setting up and taking down chess boards, scoresheets and timers for more than 80 boards and making sure that the club’s equipment would not be damaged or lost.
This amazing team of volunteers worked together to organize a successful six-round tournament, which will, hopefully, be remembered as a generous service to the chess community both for in terms of its quality as well as in term of its record turnout!
Special thanks is owed to the people at the Hart House Hub (Lynsay, Mauro, Juan, Cynthia, Steven, Grace, Aster, Victoria and all the others), who were always helpful and friendly in the reception of the players, but our warmest thanks goes out to the parents, who remained with the children-participants throughout the day, making it possible for these young chess-players to practice their favorite game!
In terms of individual results, in the Crown Section, International Masters Nikolay Noritsyn and Leonid Gerzhoy were joined in first place by Richard Chen. Each of them scored 4.5/6 so the prizes was split into three equal shares.
In the Under 2200 Section, Annex Chess Club’s Daniel Wiebe finished clear first with 5/6 and four players tied for 2nd-4th places with 4.5/6: Amirsalar Javidfard, Jonathan Yu and Nameer Issani.
In the Under 1900 Section, it was Dumitru Mindrigan who won gold with a splendid performance of 5 wins and 1 drawn in 6 games! Kumar Sharma was second with 5/6 and Alberto Ranola scored 4.5/6 and tied for third place with Mr. Vadim Khachaturov.
In the Under 1600 Section the unstoppable Bhavatharshan Jeyakumar performed formidably and claimed first place with 5.5/6. The silver medal went to our own Jack Moore who scored 5/6 losing only to the gold medalist. Finally, the third place was shared by three players who scored 4.5/6: Austin Xie, Amy Ai and Evgeny Kalmanson.
With 5.5/6, Rohit Skumar was the proud and sole winner of the Under 1300 Section but two more players won prizes by scoring 5/6, thereby tying for 2nd place: Dylan Xiong and Noah Ripley.
Finally, the Under 1000 Section saw three (!) gold medalists, each of whom scored 5 points in 6 games: Jacob Gaisinsky, Valery Stroganov and Danylo Glinnyi.
For the complete List of Participants and for a a full record of the Pairings, Results and Final Standing in each Section of the Tournament, click on following links:
You can also check out the Photo Gallery and the promotional video of the tournament.
Many thanks to every person who contributed to the success of the 2018 Hart House Reading Week Open (players, organizers, parents) and congratulations to the winners of the respective sections!
See you all at our next Open Tournament in December 2018!
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Hart House Chess Club 