The 2013 Cincinnati Quick Chess Championship was held on July 19th and 26th. The event brought out 12 players, including Sergey Berchenko who has been the City Champion previously, and several new Russian-speaking players. Hans Multhopp and Mike Giglio joined in on the second day to bring the total number of players to 14.

Hans Multhopp drew with overall winner Alex Markovits in the final round, the only blemish on Alex's otherwise dominating performance of 5.5/6.

Oleg Fabrikank's only loss was to Alex, which allowed him to have the second best point total and win the top prize in the lower section.

The tournament provided us with a lot of fun games between the competitors. With only 24 minutes for a player to make their moves each game, there is a lot of opportunity for blunders or clock wins. But the games seemed to play out to normal chess positions that often occur over the board, a testament to the high skill level of all players involved in this event.

Most victories seemed to go to those players who showed more aggressiveness in their games. The exception to the aggressive and open position type games was Alex's game with Hans in the final round. His unbeaten streak through the first five games gave him a dominating lead. Hans was able to break him down into a strictly positional game. This game, which was a shock to me, would normally be found only in the slowest time controlled events.

An end game of rook and pawns vs. rook and pawns was played out in pain(pawn)-staking detail. Every move someone either pushed a pawn, attacked a pawn, or defended a pawn. The back and forth left each player on the verge of victory or defeat.

Finally, with each player unable to force their pawns through, a draw was conceded as a worthy result in this hard fought battle. Congratulations to Alex Marcovits for his victory in this excellent tournament.

-Duane Larkin