NY defeats Cleveland!

Ok so it's not the Knicks over the Cavs, or the Yankees beating the Indians, But WNY's own Tom Warner avenged the Bills loss to the Browns by going undefeated in the U1800 section of this past weekend's Cleveland Open. He was 4.5/5 and the only missing 1/2 point was due to his taking a bye in the 5th round-presumably because he had to drive back home. One of the ironies of this event was after driving all that way to play, Tom was paired in the second round against his protégée' Ryan "Mad dog" Madden. Even more comical was this was the second pairing for Ryan against a local WNYer, as he played Evan Ashton in the first round! Perhaps next year they can just play in Sardinia and call it the Cleveland Open Satellite Tournament. I am sure though that the $1000 prize for first place made it a sweet ride home for Tom and friends.

Other notable WNYers playing this weekend in Cleveland were: RCC's FM Igor Nikolayev in the Open section, and Ryan and Nathan Palmisano in the U1000 section.

The cross table for the event is at http://main.uschess.org/assets/msa_joomla/XtblMain.php?200910253721

Thanks to Josh Rofrano who alerted me to the story by commenting in the prior post. Josh Rofrano said, "recently after looking through the cross-tables i saw that tom warner as well as a few other western ny locals played in the cleveland open. Tom did real well by winning the U1800 section outright! Good work tom."