Lubbock Open Round 2 Actions
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
Susan Polgar
April 26, 2008
Chess Research, Daily News, SPICE / Webster, Susan's Personal Blog
4 Comments
Congratulations!
Look at all those people, there must be hundreds!
Susan Polgar knows how to organize chess tournaments!
Here is a story that interested me and proved what a small world it is.
Twenty-nine years ago, I was a member of the chess team at Monterey High School, where this photo was taken. We traveled to Wolfforth, at the time a small country town southwest of Lubbock, to take on the Frenship High School chess team. We won that match narrowly, with our best scorer losing one of four games to Frenship’s Mike Ormdorff. I was a reporter for the school news magazine at the time and wrote up the story. During the typesetting process, a line of text was omitted and people didn’t see Ormdorff’s full name. I didn’t play Ormdorff in that match.
In Round 4 of yesterday’s Lubbock Open, I finally faced off against Ormdoff. He was playing in the Open section while overseeing his children; I was playing in the Open section while supervising students at Premier High School, a nearby charter school. The game started out as a Two Knights’ Defense: 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Nf6 4. Ng5 d5 5. exd5. At that point I wondered whether to take the pawn and subject myself to 6. Nf7 (the Fegatello or Fried Liver Attack). After a minute or so I decided to go for it, hoping the piece advantage (6. … Kxf7; 7. Qf3+ ke6 8. d4 Ncb4 and so on) would weather me through the storm. Ormdorff sat and thought for a good five minutes daring himself to take the pawn. But … he didn’t. He played 6. d3 instead and launched a conventional attack. Soon he took advantage of my breaking off guard of a Bishop, and won very smoothly. This game secured him the Under-1600 prize with a 3-1 score.
Later, while talking with Premier High School’s sponsor, I found that her husband had met Ormdorff in graduate school and the two men were close friends.
I write to illustrate what a small world this really is, and to tell folks about what happens when you prepare for an opponent to play a specific line … and he or she DOESN’T play it. Although high masters may cringe at lower-rated players’ tendencies to “get out of the books”, it can be a powerful allure for many.
Peter Harris
Premier High School, Monterey High School Class of 1979
Cross Table? Complete results?