2005 Nevada State Championship & North v South Team Match
Tonopah, Nevada, September 24, 2005

The annual pilgrimage to Tonopah for the Nevada State Championship and North-South Team Match took place on Saturday, September 24, 2005.

In the State Championship Match, Dewey Maynard was the Southern Nevada Representative, having won the Nevada Open back in June, while Arkia Bayati was once again the Northern Representative, having booked his place by winning the annual event held at the Reno Chess Club.  This year's match will go down as one of the most thrilling of recent histories as Arkia eventually overcame Dewey in the second set of tie-break matches.

In the main games, Arkia managed to win with the white pieces only for Dewey to even the score by doing the same in the second game.  There then followed two 30 minute tie-break games that followed suit with Arkia winning the first game only for Dewey to claw his way back into the match by leveling the score with a win in the second game.  The next tie-breaker was two 15 minute games.  The two players split the first 15 minute game and then Arkia managed to win the second game with the black pieces to take the title of 2005 Nevada State Champion!

2005 Nevada State Championship Match Results:

The North-South Team Match was played over seven boards this year.  The Southern Nevada Team, having won the title for the first time in the last five years were determined to hang onto their title, while the Northern Nevada Team were geared up to, as their website put it, "take back the trophy that Southern Nevada borrowed last year!"

A strong lineup from both teams ensured that this year's match would be as tough as ever and this proved to be the case.  In the first round of matches the Southern Nevada Team managed to scratch out a 4½-3½ advantage thanks to wins from Chris Bird, Pierre Ducharme and Charles Hatherill although Northern Nevada kept things close with wins from Ed Straver and David Peterson.

The second round of games brought the match alive with Southern Nevada getting two fairly quick wins from Pierre Ducharme and Charles Hatherill.  You would have expected that to demoralize and kill off any aspirations the Northern Nevada Team had, but they kept plugging away and Ed Straver got them back into the match win a win on board one.  The game that sealed the trophy going back to the South was on board 3 between Chad Gauvin and Bill Case.  It looked as if Bill had a crushing attack at one stage with Chad's king being hopelessly driven to the center and Bill's queen and marauding knights only having to deliver checkmate but things were not to be as Chad managed a miracle escape and probably should have won the game late on.  Both players agreed to a draw with Chad having a bishop against Bill's two pawns.  This game meant the match could only be tied 7-7 and with two games left to go the North at least wanted to tie the match, even though the trophy goes home with the current champions.  In those two last games, David Peterson pulled off a miracle win for the North after being a piece down but Walt Churchill managed to go into "deep thought" mode with precious few minutes left on his clock and he managed to lose on time.  In the last remaining game Jerry Weikel tried to mate Chris Bird with bishop and rook against a lone rook.  Unfortunately Jerry couldn't seem to make any progress and Chris claimed a draw by the 50-move rule on move 99 to seal a 7½-6½ point victory for the South!

Many thanks are due to John Trivett and Jerry Weikel for organizing the two sets of teams and to all the players that turned up at Tonopah to make this once again an exciting tournament.

North-South Individual Match Results: