Local Chess Freaks Shine in Tourney

Eleven Harvard students entered this year's Greater Boston Open Chess Tournament: six ended in the money.

In the Open competition Bruce Leverett and freshman Mitch Tobin split the Class "A" prize of $100 with three wins and one loss each.

Harvard's highest ranked player in the tournament, freshman John Frankle, also finished with a 3-1 record, but his ranking of expert was too high to qualify for the Class A prize. An expert (2000-2200 points) is ranked just below a master in chess.

More than 250 participants played in the two rounds Saturday and two Sunday in the Prudential Center Cafeteria.

In the reserve section--for those with fewer than 1900 master points--sophomore Ted Jewell scored three wins, giving him a tie for second in the Class B race and $5 of his $8.50 entry fee back.

In the booster section--fewer than 1600 master points--Dan Jacobson swept his four opponents for a first and $100, while Mike Corey tied for second with 9 0-1. And in the Noviee Section--less than 1400--a highly-underrated Marc Carter won his four matches.

Leverett, who is president of the Harvard Chess Club, and Franklin, one of this year's brightest stars, both entered the last round undefeated. But Franklin lost his match in a dogged bishop and rook endgame, while Leverett made a hash of the Queen's Gambit Declined, giving up a pawn on the seventeenth move.

Tobin had lost his second game to master Dan Harington, but finished off his last opponent handily. "I just wiped him off the board with the Saemisch Variation of the Nimzo-Indian Defense," he remarked afterwards. "He never developed his pieces. He played like a fish."

Jacobson, an advanced-standing sophomore in Biochemistry, only had to play for three of his wins. In the first round on Sunday morning his opponent sat down at the wrong board and didn't discover his mistake until three hours later, two after the deadline for forreiture. "The player I played first round had played him, and said I would have beaten him anyway" Jacobson added in defense.

In the two games in which he won with white. Jacobson tried the unusual Blackmar-Diemer Gambit because "nobody knows about it."

Carter played in the novice division just to try his hand at tournament play and found he had an aptitude. "I was playing under my station," he said. "I didn't have a ranking, so they let me." He added that although he'd prefer a higher level of play in his next tournament, for this time, at least, "winning was fun.