Joshua Grabinsky and Nick Raptis tied for first with 8/9 in the Oregon Closed Championship, played February 8-9 and 15-17. I don’t know if there were official tiebreaks, but the moral tiebreaks go to Joshua for winning head-to-head against Nick, though there is something to be said for Nick winning every other game he played. Mike Janniro won the Challengers section by a two point margin, allowing only 2 draws in nine rounds. You can find the full results on the uschess.org site
Only the players in the arena know what really happened in a tournament. Since I did not participate, I will substitute cold statistical analysis of the games as a superficial summary of what really happened.
Most regions of the country have favorite openings, often the results of following leading players in town. Columbus Ohio in the 1970s and 80s showed a lot of love for the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit following the leadership of Chuck Diebert – just ask Charles Schulien if you don’t believe me. And we loved to play the exchange variation of the QGD in Minneapolis, with Andrew Tang scoring heavily with both white and black. So what impressions do I have of Oregon Chess based on these 85 games?
The Championship section demonstrated their love for the black pieces by scoring 47.5%, as opposed to a mere 30% with white. David Bronstein would have approved, as he once said “if the game of chess could talk, it would say: ‘Love me with black! Anyone will love me with white.’”
Oregonians must read John Watson’s books, because they Play the French. 12 of the 85 games from both sections were fought in this opening, with black winning 7 and white winning only 2. Is this the influence of Nick Raptis? By the way, I have no illusions of turning this town into a Gibbins-Weidenhagen Gambit fan club. That is a different Wilson Gibbins – it ain’t me.
Over half (43/85) of the games opened 1.e4. Yet Oregon can be proud to say that they are a Berlin-free zone – no games began 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6.
Finally, everyone is afraid of Zoey Tang’s Trompowsky. None of her four opponents dared to play 1…Nf6 or even 1…d5 against her 1.d4.