Ralph Zimmer Wins Inaugural Chesapeake Open

The First Chesapeake Open chess tournament was held June 20-22, 2008 at the Charles Commons Conference Center in Baltimore, Maryland. A total of 82 players competed in seven sections. The winner in the Open section was Ralph Zimmer (2269) with a score of 4.5-0.5. Ralph beat the top three seeds on his way to a 2642 performance! Ralph had a perfect score going into the last round, with a potential to win $1500 if he won, but drew Shinsaku Uesugi and ended up winning $1050. The higher total prizes for wins may have influenced the play on boards 2 and 3 where both final games lasted longer than 5 and 1/2 hours. In the end FM Tegshsuren Enkhbat and FM Allan Savage tied for second with scores of 3.5-1.5.

Xiaobo Dong won the Under 2100 section going 5-0 and winning $1200. In the under 1900 section, David Mc Duffie and Jeevan Karamsetty tied for 1st place. In the Under 1700 section, Tanner Mc Namara beat Dobrynya Konoplev in the last round to catch up and tie him for first place. Dobrynya had a tense round 4 win in a K+Q vs K+R ending. Dobrynya had 10 seconds on his clock for the last 10 moves while his opponent had over 20 minutes. There was a four-way tie for first in the under 1500 section between Alan Nguyen, Dimitry Grigoryev, Richard Li, and Gregory Carroll. Gregory was coming off a 19-year layoff and was undefeated going into the last round. The under 1300 section was won by Alex Nguyen (Alan's twin brother) with a 4.5-0.5 score. Finally, the under 1100 section was also won with a 4.5-0.5 by Saketh Papaiahgari.

A total of $5600 in prize money was awarded using a score-based prize distribution. The final crosstable in tie break order is here

Next year's Chesapeake Open will be back at the Charles Commons on June 19-21.

Pictures from the 2008 Chesapeake Open

Useugi and Zimmer start their round 5 game.