Saturday, July 8

Saturday was designed to be the day of competitive bughouse, with its tournament offering a prize money which has never been seen for bughouse: $200 for the first team, $100 for the second, and Sfr 100.- for the first all-swiss team. It all started at noon with the setting of the boards and the food/drinks, followed by a little bughouse warm-up. This allowed two juniors of Geneva, Yama Sangin and Laurent Vilaseca, to test themselves against the favourite team of Marcus Mueller and Georg von Zimmermann (marcusm and Tecumseh); the quick result of it was that Yama decided to quit knight sacs on f7 and that both decided to split before the tournament started!
Although Fabrice Liardet (nabla) was worried enough to write a precise ruleset and to decide not to play in order to be a referee, there were very few cases of contention during the tourney, played by 11 teams as a double round robin (20 games in total). It proved to be an easy going for Marcus Mueller - Georg von Zimmermann. They showed that they were not only Internet players but had excellent OTB players qualities. They lost only one single game, and that in the last round against Robert Huber - Mirko Kratochvila (MiRU-krat), when they were already sure to win the tournament and allowed themselves some decontraction.
A good performance can also be credited to Marat Gataoulline - Daniel Denes (Marat-marv), who came second with 16 points, two points ahead of the #2 seeded team of Robert Huber - Mirko Kratochvila and the first swiss team, Rodolphe Francey (Tjeulesbetes) - Fabrice Delay, who became Swiss Champions, themselves two points ahead of Fabio Cesareo (chambesy) - Pascal Horn. The excellent final ranking of Vincent Berger and Laurent Vilaseca (sixth with 8 points) must be noted too; moreover, they could have taken one more point from Marat Gataoulline - Daniel Denes, who managed to make two illegal moves in the same game and still win it (an illegal move allows the opponent to claim the win). First Daniel played the aggressive Qd1-g3, and then Marat managed the surprising move consisting in taking a pawn using one of his opponent's pawns - which in the speed of action got unnoticed. After the game, Marat and Daniel argued for their defense that such moves were impossible to make on the Internet servers!
The palm of sympathy goes to the Erich Lang - Roger Lüber team of Zürich, scoring only 2 points but obviously having great fun, and always a large smile when announcing their result. To say something about the good level of the tournament, these guys are chess players around 2000 Elo, being no beginners to bughouse (although they were not used to drop mate).

Here are the complete results:

First international swiss Bughouse championship, July 8, 2000

11 teams , double round robin, 20 rounds
 
Rang Equipe
Points
1 Marcus "marcusm" Müller - Georg "Tecumseh" von Zimmermann (D)
19
2 Daniel "marv" Denes - Marat "Marat" Gataoulline (D - RUS)
16
3 Robert "MiRU" Huber - Mirko "krat" Kratochvila (D - CH)
14
4 Fabrice Delay - Rodolphe "Tjeulesbetes" Francey (CH, swiss champions)
14
5 Fabio "chambesy" Cesareo - Pascal Horn (CH)
12
6 Vincent Berger - Laurent Vilaseca (CH)
8
7 Quentin Bogousslavsky - José Rincon (CH)
7
7 Yvan Masserey - Laurent Schneider (CH)
7
9 Yama Sangin - Moo Thepracha (CH)
6
10 Laurent "lbartho" Bartholdi - Stéphane Coletta (CH)
5
11 Erich Lang - Roger Lüber (CH)
2

 
 
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
0
1
  
Total
1. Müller - Zimmermann  
1
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
  
19
2. Huber - Kratochvila
1
  
1
1
1
2
2
1
2
2
1
  
14
3. Denes - Gataoulline
0
1
  
2
2
2
1
2
2
2
2
  
16
4. Delay - Francey
0
1
0
  
2
2
2
2
1
2
2
  
14
5. Cesareo - Horn
0
1
0
0
  
2
2
2
1
2
2
  
12
6. Bartholdi - Coletta
0
0
0
0
0
  
1
2
1
0
1
  
5
7. Masserey - Schneider
0
0
1
0
0
1
  
2
1
1
1
  
7
8. Lang - Lüber
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
  
0
1
0
  
2
9. Bogousslavsky - Rincon
0
0
0
1
1
1
1
2
  
0
1
  
7
10. Berger - Vilaseca
0
0
0
0
0
2
1
1
2
  
2
  
8
11. Sangin - Thepracha
0
1
0
0
0
1
1
2
1
0
    
6

After the tournament, the bughouse fun continued up to past midnight. The following game played during the evening showed that luck was an essential element in brilliant tactics (the position being approximatively reconstructed):
 
marcusm



nabla (to play)
marv (to play)



Tjeulesbetes

Tjeulesbetes and nabla were approximatively 15 seconds up on time in this position. nabla noticed the possible mate on e7 on the right board and played "blitzschnell" 1...Q@e1+!! to enforce a queen trade, just forgetting to check whose move it was in his partner's game. After 2.Qxe1 by marcusm and 1...B@d3+ by marv, it was indeed Tjeulesbetes who got mated because of the stupid queen trade. The only possibility left was to look for the mate, which came by 2...Nxb2+! 3.Kc2 (3.Ke2 Qd3#) 3...Qd3+ and White had to sit, as 4.Kxb2 N@a4# meant mate in one. Of course this was achieved while Tjeulesbetes and nabla were still 3 seconds up on time...
It is not clear to me whether there is another way to force mate in this position. For instance,  1...Nxb2+? is simply met by 2.Bxb2!, as pointed out by Tjeulesbetes.

All that did for more than 12 hours of bughouse, but MiRU, marv and Tjeulesbetes are said to have continued bugging much later in the night...