ChessFest 2007

Full flyer of the event: HTML PDF

Last Sunday, October 14, UMBC held ChessFest event. Four UMBC Chess Fellows Sergey Erenburg, Pawel Blehm, Katerina Rohonyan and Bruci Lopez provided chess instructions to over a hundred of children from different schools of Maryland, Virginia and DC. The director of International School of Chess Dr.Korenman conducted a lecture for chess coaches.

After the lectures, the public had an opportunity to enjoy a simultaneous matches against Sergey Erenburg and Katerina Rohonyan, followed by two exhibition matches.

The first exhibition match was between two scholastic champions - 2006 Champion Alexander Barnett and 2007 Champion Scott Low.




Scott played well with white pieces and managed to smoke out black's king. This ensured him $50 prize and opportunity to play the next game against "The Polish Magician" Pawel Blehm.

Pawel, being cold-blooded as a good solid GM over 2500, suffocated Scott on his favorite territory - Sicilian defence with 5... Bd7. The commentators "internationally known and locally respected" Grandmaster Semion Palatnik and so-called "The Kiev Killer" Katerina Rohonyan tried to spice up the macth a bit. However, Pawel cut off all of their attempts by giving no chances for a counterplay to his opponent.

Many thanks to Masako Uesugi for the pictures.