Monday, October 15, 2007

Rewriting History

The Blitz received a paragraph in this morning's Chess Notes column in The Boston Globe:
On the "grown-up" front, New England also has a leading combination in the Boston Blitz team in the US Chess League. As of late last week, Boston Blitz was leading the Eastern division by one match, warding off the Baltimore Kingfishers by one point. The game of the week was that of two ex-US champions: Larry Christiansen against our own Patrick Wolff, who is playing first board for the San Francisco Internet team. Christiansen won. San Francisco nevertheless won the match. Boston Blitz draws on a reservoir of strong players, especially Christiansen, Grandmaster Eugene Perlshtyn [sic], and Jorge Samour-Hasbun [sic], the Internet Chess Club blitz champion. The team is rounded out by Bill Kelleher, Denys Shmelov, Vadim Martirosov, Chris Williams, and Ilya Krasik. There are four more weeks to go and then hopefully the playoffs.
The Chess Notes column goes under the by-line of Harold Dondis and Patrick Wolff, though it is generally understood that Harold writes the articles and Patrick annotates the games. In this case, we can only assume that Wolff's wishful thinking led to the error regarding the outcome the Blitz-Mechanics match.
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After a one week hiatus, the Blitz have again brought out a big guns lineup for this week's match with New Jersey. Of course the Knockouts have a competitive lineup as well.

GM Larry Christiansen: 2663 vs. GM Joel Benjamin: 2653
SM Jorge Sammour-Hasbun: 2558 vs. IM Dean Ippolito: 2447
NM Denys Shmelov: 2251 vs. NM Evan Ju: 2268
NM Chris Williams: 2175 vs. NM Victor Shen: 2218

Boston has a slight average rating advantage (2412 to 2397) and gets White on Boards 2 and 4. While Arun Sharma is going to predict a relatively easy 3-1 win for the Blitz (unless he changes his mind before he publishes his draft post), I wouldn't be surprised if New Jersey puts up a tough fight since their playoff hopes are on the line.

BCC Weblog provides independent coverage of the United States Chess League. It is not affiliated with the USCL or the Boston Blitz.

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