Tie at top in Canadian Open Chess Championship, livestreamed on chessbrah, as Hamilton becomes chess spotlight of nation
When the endgame dust had cleared at the Canadian Open Chess Championship, just held in Hamilton, there emerged an all-Canadian tie at the top of the leaderboard - and a big boost for local chess and Canadian Open visibility, with parts of the tournament livestreamed on the immensely popular chess website, Chessbrah.
Nikolay Noritsyn and Shawn Rodrigue-Lemieux, an International Master from Toronto and an International Master from Quebec respectively, share the championship title after each amassing seven and a half points. They each won six and drew three games, with no losses, over the course of the six-day tournament, held at Hillfield Strathallan College.
It went very well, very smoothly right through, and all the people working on the tournament and playing in it were awesome," said Patrick McDonald, one of three co-chairs of the event.
He added that the two winners are both excellent players probably on the cusp of becoming Grand Masters, the highest designation in chess. There are about 10 Grand Masters in Canada, just over 1,700 in the world.
Whether their win at the Canadian Open will get them closer remains to be seen. One of the quirks of this year's tournament - a popular one with many - was that it was truly an open" affair with top players as likely to be matched against those with much lower ratings as with players of their own ratings calibre.
It is refreshing to see up-and-coming players get a chance to play those with ratings of 2,500 or more, said McDonald. There were 10 GMs at the tournament, from all over, some as far away as Iran, Israel and Cuba.
One comment (from a participant) about the fully open section was that they were not thrilled with the bounce' factor (players bouncing from unrated opponents to highly rated ones) but they enjoyed the tournament overall, just not that part of it."
The reviews of the championship here in Hamilton were almost universally glowing. The event went off without a hitch and there were dozens and dozens of games played.
Aman Hambleton, 29, a Grand Master now living in Toronto, was here, playing competitively for the first time in three years. He actually won the Canadian Open title, in a tie with Razvan Preotu, in 2017. He came in 10th this time, with five wins, two draws and a loss. The reason for the hiatus is partially his development, with several other Grand Masters, of the Canadian chess website Chessbrah, with more than 285,000 subscribers on YouTube.
Chessbrah is an enormously popular site, both in Canada and internationally and Hambleton was streaming his games so they were viewed by thousands.
We were among the very first to do it anywhere (live streaming of chess)," says Hambleton who is rated at over 2,400. I don't have the full stats (on the Hamilton event) but on the first day I was lucky enough to win and go some extra boosts. There were 20,000 watching that first day."
All good for Hamilton. All good for chess. He said his rust" showed during the tournament but that he enjoyed being back at it and thought the organizers ran a very good championship.
He doesn't think he'll return to full-time competitive chess as the work he's doing for Chessbrah is much more lucrative." It shows his and others' games at tournaments, him playing chess street hustlers and much else.
One of the stories of the tournament was unrated Waterloo player Ryan Campbell, 23, winning his first five games in a row, including one against a Grand Master. It was an unprecedented performance and he stood atop the standings after five games. He didn't fare as well in the second half of the event and ended up just being edged out for the top unrated prize.
We are thrilled for him," said his father Bruce Campbell, chief information officer at the University of Waterloo. He was there the whole tournament with his wife, Ryan's mother Doris Richter, in support.
He is really enjoying the tournament. He has been playing a lot online but this was his first over the board competition. One of his wins came with the Caro-Cann defence, which he has studied a lot. We're very proud of him."
The top prize for the tournament was $8,000. Other prizes went to GM Victor Mikhalevski, who came in third, and won the top senior prize. Jade Ouellet won for top woman first; Rachel Chin for top woman second; Doug Bailey, Aaron Mendes and Richard Chen tied for top player under 2,200 rating; Ian Loadman for top veteran; Rachel Chen for top woman under 2000 rating; Michael Streegan for top unrated player; Ryan Leong for top player under 1,900 rating; Bohdan Chychkevych, Neil Moses, Ryan Xu and Nevin Deshpande tied for top player under 1,600 rating.
Jeff Mahoney is a Hamilton-based reporter and columnist covering culture and lifestyle stories, commentary and humour for The Spectator.jmahoney@thespec.com