William Lombardy Benefit Tournament

 

On January 21 GM Rev. William Lombardy Benefit was hosted in Palatine, IL. With a remarkable turnout of 54 players, almost 60 registered and an amazing 23 people played in Open Division.

Our day started out in unbelievable style where our facility allowed one of their classrooms to be utilized for a meet and greet to spend time with Rev. Lombardy. Rev. Lombardy who not only won US Open Championship three times and was the only undefeated World Junior Champion (11-0) in 1957, a feat that has never been repeated.

In addition he also won the Log Cabin U.S. Seeded Championship which in now today's U.S. Championship. He is most famous for being Bobby Fischer’s coach and his second in world famous 1972 match vs. Boris Spassky in Reykjavik Iceland.

The line was sometimes over 10 deep but no one seemed to care to wait a few minutes to meet a chess legend. Many people brought items to autograph and asked several questions.

One of Illinois' up-and-coming junior players, Jacob Plotnick, sat next to Rev. Lombardy during meet and greet becausehe was the catalyst for convincing his family to move Rev. Lombardy to Chicago and live with Jacob's family.

Our open division winner was Tyler Tompkins with a perfect score of 3-0. Since we had more people sign up in the group than we expected, the prize fund was increased from $200 to $350 and we went from three categories to six. In our U700 section Micah Cain had a perfect 4 out of 4 and two people tied with 3 out of 4. By tie breaker Palash Gupta came in second and Joshua Shanahan came in third. Quest Academy, school hosting tournament won team trophy. 

In our U1000 section Sam Christos had a perfect score of 4 out of 4. Amogh Ramkumar placed second with 3 out of 4 and 5 people ended up with 2 out of 4. First time player, Fernanco Rosareo took tie breaker and Siddart Swaminathan, Zayde Syed, Neola Edwin and Catherine Liu were the other players with 2 points.

Please feel free to contact Stephen Plotnick via E-mail This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you want to include your location to host a tournament or for more information about our tournaments.