Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Far West Open Report, and an Invitation

I wasn't able to play in the Far West Open here in Reno a couple of weeks ago, though I'm absolutely, unequivocally going to play in the 25th annual Western States Open at the same venue this October. Michael Aigner has a nice report on the March event over at the USCF website. I liked this part:

The Weikel family organizes these two annual events with the support and sponsorship of the Sands Regency hotel. Their goal is to create a chess festival atmosphere more commonly found in Europe. They provide boards and sets and players in the Open section can be identified by both a nameplate and the flag of their state or country. GM Larry Evans gave two free lectures to participants in the main tournament and GM Sergey Kudrin played a simul with game analysis afterwards. The main tournament is played at a leisurely 7-hour time control. Perhaps most importantly, staying at the Sands did not tax the player’s checkbook as the room rate ranged from $27 on weeknights and $54 on the weekend.

So I want to invite everyone to come and play at the Western States this October. Right now the page doesn't seem to be working, but as soon as I have something I'll post a link and we can start making plans for some kind of chess blogger's convention there!

Let me know if you're interested.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

heck yeah i'm interested....i just might show up, if i can swing it. if you are there, i'd gladly buy you a beer or a coke or whatever....

Robert Pearson said...

Excellent. Make mine a martini. Then I'll buy you one. Then we'll stop so that we can show up in the morning and still play decently...

Anyway, great to hear from you, I'll get more details up on the tournament as soon as I can.