3rd Edmonton Chess Festival

By Vlad Rekhson
3rd Edmonton Chess Festival
Head Organizer

The Edmonton Chess Club would like to welcome everyone to take part in its third annual Edmonton International Chess Festival, which will take place between July 31st and August 4th, 2008 in the ECC. This will be the third year of the Edmonton Chess Festival, the main event of which is the Edmonton International tournament. In the past two years, the Edmonton International has arguably been Western Canada's premier event, however, as part of the 100 years to the Edmonton Chess Club celebrations, this year's Edmonton International promises to be even bigger and stronger than its predecessors.

Vision

The Edmonton Chess Club is now 100 years old which makes it one of the oldest clubs in the city of Edmonton, and, one of the oldest chess clubs in Canada. As the city of Edmonton becomes bigger and more vibrant, the Edmonton Chess Club would like to grow in numbers and strength. For that purpose we decided to have an annual event which features some of North America's and even world's top players, as well as top local talents.

At this point, top local masters find it difficult to compete with the best, but we believe that with time some of them will be able to earn International Master (IM) and Grand Master (GM) titles. As the elite players come into the city average club players receive a unique opportunity to meet them, observe them play live, play alongside with them in side events, learn from them in the lectures, and play against them in all play one simultaneous exhibition tournaments.

History of the Edmonton internationals

The first Edmonton International took place in April of 2006 in the Royal executive INN Hotel. This tournament had a total of 4 International Masters (Peter Vavrak from Slovakia, Jesse Kraai from New Mexico, Mihail Nekrasov from Ukraine and Lawrence Day from Ontario) 2 FIDE Masters (Dmitry Zilberstein from California and Kevin Gentes from Manitoba) and 4 Alberta Masters (Rob Gardner from Calgary, Jeff Reeve from Edmonton, Vicente Lee from Edmonton and Dale Haessel from Calgary). The winner of this event was IM Peter Vavrak with a score of 7/9. Second place was shared between two Americans: International Master (and now Grandmaster) Jesse Kraai, as well as FM Dmitry Zilberstein from California. Dmitry managed to earn his third and final IM norm in this event and he is now an IM.
The best Albertan of the tournament was a local chess legend and many times Edmonton Champion Rob Gardner with 4/9. It is interesting to note that Rob had an especially good event when you consider his games against the top players as he managed to beat IMs Jesse Kraai and Mihail Nekrasov and drew FM Dmitry Zilbestein.
Full results of the event are available at: http://fide.com/ratings/trarc.phtml?event16=2987&codt=20
Besides the Edmonton International the 1st Edmonton Chess Festival featured the Edmonton Spring Sectional and the Edmonton Open which allowed participation of all level of players. It also included the veteran Canadian IM Lawrence Day taking on all comers in a simul.
The second Edmonton International took place in the new location of the Edmonton Chess Club which is where the tournament will take place this year. This event included 2 GMs; (Melikset Khachiyan from California and Valeriy Aveskulov from Ukraine), 3 IMs ( Jesse Kraai from New Mexico and Axel Bachmann from Paraguay who now have GM titles, as well as John Donaldson from California), 2 FMs (Calgarian Greg Huber and Californian Eugene Yanayt) and 3 Alberta masters; (Zhichao Li from Edmonton, Jeff Reeve from Edmonton and Dale Haessel from Calgary).
The winner with an amazing 7.5/9 was Californian Grandmaster
Melikset Khachiyan. Second place for the second year in a row went to Jesse Kraai while third went to the legendary San-Francisco IM; John Donaldson with 6/9.
The best Albertans were FM Greg Huber and Zhichao Li with 3.5/9 each. Both Greg and Zhichao took a point from the GMs as Greg Huber beat the pre-tournament favourite Valeriy Aveskulov, while Zhichao drew Aveskulov and the soon to be GM, Jesse Kraai.
Full standings are available at: http://fide.com/ratings/trarc.phtml?event16=9754&codt=25
Other events of the Second Edmonton International included: a sectional tournament for all levels, a simul by GM Valeriy Aveskulov, a lecture and simul by IM John Donaldson and a simul against juniors by IM Axel Bachmann.
The second Chess Festival received a lot more local and International press coverage than its predecessor which included non-chess press such as: a mention on the front page of the Edmonton Journal, a story on the Edmonton Global TVs daily news and on LA times chess column. It also included chess related media such as articles in the United States Chess Federation website: http://main.uschess.org/content/view/6644/380, Chess Canada magazine and video promotions of the event done by Michael Stephen Sekuloff:
GM Valeriy Aveskulov Simul: http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=8101610993189043483,
GM Valeriy Aveskulov-Micah Hughey Simul game: http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=7929522412123041334,
Tournament conclusion: http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-4485697096191119048,
IM John Donaldson lecture: http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-7797960252581968016
I would like to also thank IM John Donaldson, GM Melikset Khachiyan and Bruce Thomas for helping bring more exposure to
the event.