Albert Street Autonomous Zone

For Pairings and results see here

The tournament sold out!

In the first round, 15 folks who bought a ticket didn’t come, so, round one featured 15 forfeit wins. The missing folks also resulted in a delay on the start time, which had the upside of enabling one late participant to arrive in time to play (although, ironically, he got one of the forfeit wins). There were no upsets (in which the player with a much higher rating doesn’t win) in round 1.

In the second round, we were left with 21 people, so I hopped in in order to allow everyone to have a game (thus serving in the capacity of “house player”). I made sure to give myself zero-point byes for rounds where I wasn’t needed (and it turns out I was only needed for round 2) to minimize the chance of my qualifying for any prizes. Still no upsets in this round. An additional 3 people bowed out at this point thus “re-evening” the number of participants, specifically 18 people left.

By the third round the really strong players were finally starting to face off against each other. There were two upsets: Boron (1953) beat Valentino (2260); and Joshua Huston-Earle (1352) was held to a draw by Joel Reimer (unrated).

In the final round, there was one upset, in which Boron (1953) drew Johnson (2348). It was a particularly intense game in which time trouble featured at the end.

With Boron having scored two out of the tournaments three upsets, and winning the Natural Cycle Works blitz section, he clearly demonstrated being in excellent form. Congrats!

Thanks to everyone who came out!