Sunday, December 07, 2008

2008 USCL Top Board Honors

The Top Board Honors for the 2008 USCL season have been awarded! The season was exciting, and we all look forward to next year. Congrats to the Dallas Destiny on repeating their championship.

Note: this post describes the details on how Top Board Honors are calculated.

Note also, this is not attempting to be a prediction of the USCL All-Star team, but simply a way of ranking seasonal performance and perseverance.


Board 1
Gold - Julio Becerra - Miami (17.19)
Silver - Jaan Ehlvest - Tennessee (12.43)
Bronze - Larry Christiansen - Boston (10.11)
Iron - Sergey Erenburg - Baltimore (9.49)
Tin - Pascal Charbonneau - New York (9.45)

Board 2
Gold - Davorin Kuljasevic - Dallas (24.88)
Silver - Slava Mikhailuk - Seattle (9.67)
Bronze - Oleg Zaikov - Carolina (9.33)
Iron - Dean Ippolito - New Jersey (9.14)
Tin - Thomas Bartell - Philadelphia (9.11)

Board 3
Gold - Marc Esserman - Boston (24.10)
Silver - Alex Lenderman - Queens (19.01)
Bronze - Sam Shankland - San Francisco (16.28)
Iron - Ron Simpson - Carolina (15.34)
Tin - Osmany Perea - Miami (10.43)

Board 4
Gold - Bayaraa Zorigt - Dallas (17.76)
Silver - Eric Rodriguez - Miami (11.20)
Bronze - Ilya Krasik -Boston (9.84)
Iron - Matthew Herman - New York (8.60)
Tin - Craig Jones - Carolina (8.54)


USCL 2008 Final Rating List

Another exciting season of United States Chess League action has ended. The Dallas Destiny repeats as champions of the league, beating the Boston Blitz in a rematch of last year's finals. And, like last year, the finals went to the exciting tiebreak matches, where Davorin Kuljasevic and Bayaraa Zorigt were the heros for Dallas, not only winning their regular match games, but also games in the tiebreak match. For his efforts, Kuljasevic ended the year atop the rating list.

Thanks, of course, to the sponsor of the US Chess League, Pokerstars.com. I tried Pokerstars a couple of days ago, and they have a really nice interface.

Final 2008 USCL Rating List

1 2635 Davorin Kuljasevic
2 2633 Jaan Ehlvest
3 2617 Julio Becerra
4 2611 Marko Zivanic
5 2607 Sergey Erenburg
6 2599 Hikaru Nakamura
7 2579 Larry Christiansen
8 2577 Josh Friedel
9 2565 Vinay Bhat
10 2564 Pascal Charbonneau
11 2557 Patrick Wolff
12 2550 Marc Esserman
13 2547 Lev Milman
14 2545 Joel Benjamin
15 2537 Alex Stripunsky
16 2536 Pawel Blehm
17 2532 Alex Lenderman
18 2526 Levon Altounian
19 2525 Sergey Kudrin
20 2525 Rogelio Barcenilla
21 2523 Dmitry Schneider
22 2519 Dean Ippolito
23 2519 Boris Gulko
24 2516 Eugene Perelshteyn
25 2516 Eli Vovsha
26 2516 Gregory Serper
27 2505 Jorge Sammour-Hasbun
28 2500 Bruci Lopez
29 2493 Emory Tate
30 2488 Thomas Bartell
31 2488 Slava Mikhailuk
32 2483 Drasko Boskovic
33 2478 Sam Shankland
34 2478 John Fedorowicz
35 2474 Ron Simpson
36 2458 Irina Krush
37 2456 Marcel Milat
38 2454 Parker Zhao
39 2453 Jan van de Mortel
40 2448 David Vigorito
41 2448 John Donaldson
42 2445 Mehmed Pasalic
43 2440 Florin Felecan
44 2433 Jonathan Schroer
45 2430 Oleg Zaikov
46 2426 John Bartholomew
47 2423 Igor Schneider
48 2422 Nikola Mitkov
49 2421 Mackenzie Molner
50 2420 Marcel Martinez
51 2415 Osmany Perea
52 2413 Denis Shmelov
53 2405 Ron Burnett
54 2402 Charles Galofre
55 2401 Gregory Braylovsky
56 2399 Charles Riordan
57 2396 Bryan Smith
58 2394 Jay Bonin
59 2393 Dmitry Zilberstein
60 2393 Tegshsuren Enkhbat
61 2389 David Pruess
62 2385 Blas Lugo
63 2379 Bayaraa Zorigt
64 2377 Andrei Zaremba
65 2372 Eric Rodriguez
66 2371 Angelo Young
67 2370 Mark Ginsburg
68 2367 Eric Tangborn
69 2363 Daniel Yeager
70 2359 Peter Bereolos
71 2357 Robby Adamson
72 2349 Todd Andrews
73 2347 Richard Costigan
74 2341 Daniel Naroditsky
75 2339 Matthew Herman
76 2338 Udayan Bapat
77 2333 Katerina Rohonyan
78 2328 Matan Prilleltens
79 2320 Irina Zenyuk
80 2319 Michael Thaler
81 2317 Warren Harper
82 2317 Larry Kaufman
83 2314 Ilya Krasik
84 2312 John Readey
85 2309 Danny Rensch
86 2304 Craig Jones
87 2301 Gregory Young
88 2299 Elvin Wilson
89 2298 Ilan Meerovich
90 2285 Victor Shen
91 2282 Ralph Zimmer
92 2280 Gerald Larson
93 2276 John Bick
94 2274 Michael Lee
95 2258 Evan Ju
96 2251 Ray Kaufman
97 2245 Evan Rosenberg
98 2244 Matthew Bengtson
99 2243 Leo Martinez
100 2237 Jayson Lian
101 2228 Andy May
102 2228 Andrew Ng
103 2225 Josh Sinanan
104 2223 Aaron Khan
105 2219 Adam Strunk
106 2211 Benjamin Katz
107 2211 Aleksander Ostrovskiy
108 2204 Jennifer Shahade
109 2199 Jerry Wheeler
110 2194 Michael Shahade
111 2192 Karina Vazirova

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

USCL 2008 Final Prediction

BOSTON vs. DALLAS

It has all come down to this -- the last week in the USCL.

Dallas and Boston, II. The rematch. Its deja vu all over again.

Boston returns with the same top two boards as last year. Dallas returns with the same boards two and four.

Last year, the two teams tied in the match and went to the crazy USCL tiebreaking matches for the second year in a row. It was extremely exciting, and Dallas pulled off the win in the end.

This year, however, Dallas won't need the tiebreaker. Too bad, as they are great fun to watch.

Prediction: Boston 1.5 - 2.5 Dallas