Lehigh Valley Chess Club Team “Chess Kings” win at 43rd World Amateur Team East in Parsippany, NJ

By Bruce Davis

February 20, 2013

 It was an unexpected victory for the local Lehigh Valley Chess Club team “Chess Kings” in a very competitive field to be 1^st in Under 2000 class. But in retrospect, it was a deeply satisfying one after players reflected on the long term commitment to chess play and study put forth by its members. The team is composed of the following members: Matthew O’Brien (Schnecksville, PA), Kevin Santo (Breinigsville, PA), Josh Conley Sr. (Reading, PA) and Bruce Davis Sr. (Bethlehem, PA). All are seasoned veterans of the chessboard and were able to help repeat the club’s record
of winning another award for the club for three years running at this event. Players from the club have been responsible for winning Top Team from PA the last 2 years in a row and were only hoping to three-peat again this year at the World Amateur Team East Tournament hosted by the NJ State Chess Federation. Use of highly honed practiced skills and good play were the driving force for this year’s team to win many games again this year. The players had exceeded the efforts of the last two years by winning the 7^thoverall prize of 1^st place in the Under 2000 team class category. A very
strong Princeton University A team won the overall 2013 World/US Amateur Team East tournament with a perfect team score of 6-0. Princeton University has hosted yearly team tournaments on their campus which the Lehigh University Chess Club (Bethlehem, PA) had first competed in 2012 and had also won the Top team under 2000 trophy (4^th
overall) there last February.

At this kind of event it is really a treat for any chess player to play a famous US chess master. They might not ever get a chance to face one and this event was no exception this time. Matthew O’Brien (Chess Kings team) came face to face with Grandmaster Larry Christiansen (Larry Do,Larry Do Ma team) in round 2. Many of the people and younger generational chess players were not around when GM Christiansen, who grew up in Riverside, Ca, was the US Champion in 1980, 1983 and 2002. He is currently rated 2652 and still is a force to be reckoned with ranked at #20 overall in the USA. This contest was no exception although Candidate Master Matthew O’Brien put up a quality effort he was no match for the former US Champion this time. GM Christiansen’s team was
the most challenging team “Chess Kings” faced which including young Carissa Yip, ranked 9^th of all players in the US Chess Federation’s top 100 in the 9 year old age group. She also had won on board 4 against Bruce Davis (Chess Kings) impressively in round 2.

In another side event, “world class” Bughouse players came
to play Sunday night after the event’s regular 4^th round had
concluded at the World/USATE. Among the 33 two-man teams, the competing favorites were “Neph” (short for Nephtali) Diaz (Houston, Tx) and National and FIDE Master Peter Minear (Reading,PA) (BughouseMaster.com team). After 5 fast and furious rounds of play they were the only team to finish 5-0 completing their domination of a strong field that included other US Chess Masters andsuper strong bughouse players. You can see numerous videos of past bughouse competitions at http://www.YOUTUBE.com and soon some video of the above mentioned event at the 2013 World/USATE should be posted there and at www.Bughousemaster.com.

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