Author: Vladimir Xern
Date: 10:35:46 07/14/05
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On July 14, 2005 at 04:21:56, Kurt Utzinger wrote: > Of course not: the winners were Zackary Stephen (1398 USCF-Rating) > and Steven Cramton (1685 USCF) two American chess amateurs -:) > Kurt This long-winded story may shed a little more light on the two winners than their ratings may indicate, but I hope that they won't be offended: Recently, I was an assistant at a local chess camp of 30 kids in NC, USA. The other boy assisting lives in NC with his parents during the summer, but attends a boarding school in New Hampshire (where the two winners are from). This boy told me that he had recently taken up chess, and as part of his school's chess club, is coached by Steven Cramton. I found this all rather remarkably coincidental, because the camp took place a week after this freestyle tournament that I had eagerly followed on the ChessBase website. Being under Cramton's tutelage, he shed a few more details about them than I had read. He said that they were both vastly underrated. Zackary, he told me, was around 1800-1900 USCF despite his outdated 1398 rating. Still an amateur, nevertheless. However, Cramton, he said, was likely of international master or grandmaster strength. Naturally, I thought that this student may be embellishing just a little. Noticing my skepticism, he told me of how Cramton had demolished a local New Hampshire IM in an offhand game and routinely defeats the masters at their NH chess club. He added that Cramton hadn't played in a tournament in "forever" to explain for his low rating. The two, in their ChessBase interview, said that their specialty is opening preparation and analysis. This was corroborated by my fellow assistant unknowingly, whose tournament repertoire was formed by Cramton. I mean unknowingly because one of the more "advanced" students at our camp was curious about opening play and so my friend played through a line about 14 moves and said "Well, the two book moves are so-and-so and so-and-so..." His words sounded suspiciously inconclusive, so I inquired further. Trying to dodge the issue, he finally revealed, "Well, there's a 'secret' move here that nobody is supposed to know about." His repartee's intonation seemed to say, "that theory doesn't know about." Subsequent discourse confirmed this, and revealed that this "secret" move was a TN cooked up by his coach Cramton. So, for what it's worth, there's my story.
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