128 action chess fans showed up to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the USCF’s longest-running action chess tournament, the Original “4 Rated Games Tonight!” tournament, on July 12th. This event has now moved to the New Yorker Hotel, across the street from Penn Station, in midtown Manhattan.
The tournament was held in four separate sections, the Open, Under 2200, Under 1800 and Under 1200 Sections. The Open Section featured a rather unique prize structure of $2,500 in guaranteed prizes and with 19 separate place prizes of at least $100. This undoubtedly contributed to the fairly strong turnout, at least as far as Thursday Night tournaments go, of a powerful field of 44 players rated over 2200 in the 56-player Open Section, including nine GMs and six WGMs or IMs.
Five players tied for first: GMs Tamaz Gelashvili, Alex Lenderman, Sergei Azarov, Joel Benjamin, and NM Yaacov Norowitz, winning $220 a piece.
Nicholas Ryba swept the Under 2200 Section to capture the $150 first prize, while Maksim Shvartsovskiy did the same in the Under 1800 Section, only to be joined by another perfect 4-0 result posted by Daniel Slavin in the Under 1200 Section.
Another unique feature was the addition of $1,000 in Mixed Doubles Bonus Prizes (there was no requirement that both players be in the same section; indeed, many of them were in different sections). In fact, the winning team consisted of U.S. Women’s Champion WGM Irina Krush who racked up 3 points in the very strong Open Section, while her teammate, Simon Popkin, put on the steam to score 3½ points in the Under 1800 Section. Irinia won $100 for tying for 6th-13th place in the Open, while Popkin also took home $100 for finishing second in the Under 1800 Section. But they each took home an additional $250 for scoring a combined 6½ points-- winning the $500 First Place Mixed Doubles Bonus Prize. The powerhouse team of WGM Martha Fierro in the Open Section and Nagib Gebran in the Under 2000 Section scored a combined 6 points-- enough to clinch the $250 second place Mixed Doubles Bonus Prize, which provided an attractive supplement to their individual prizes of $75 for Martha (for scoring 2½ to tie for 14th-20th in the Open Section) and $100 for Nagib (for scoring 3½ to win $100 for finishing clear second in the Under 2200 Section). These Mixed Doubles prizes proved to be so popular that there were over 21 Mixed Doubles Teams (no extra charge to sign up for this extra) participating in the 128-player field.
At the start of the second round, there was also a special Awards Ceremony to honor key individuals who have supported this event for the past quarter-century.
The Original “4 Rated Games Tonight!” is held every Thursday at 7 pm at the historic New Yorker Hotel (with an alternate 7:30 schedule for those who would otherwise be too late to play the first game).
The results of the July 12th mega-tournament are posted at the Chess Center of New York website:
chesscenter.cc/jul12/fs-4rg-25years-12.htm