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2002 Inter-District (I-D) Tournament

I dropped out of I-D play for a number of reasons:

• I am not well-prepared in the difficult mail-play openings.
• I do not have the time (and maybe not the skills) necessary take first place. Playing well is a lot of work, and seven or eight U. S. mail players (several of whom do not choose to play in the I-D) are favorites to beat me.
• Two of the regular I-D players have admitted to cheating (intentionally taking more than the legal 3 days to reply to moves).
• There is a recurring complaint that the players who edit the I-D booklet (as I do) have an unfair advantage, because they get to see the games of the previous tournament before the other players do. Most of the players are thankful for my unpaid services in this task, a few seem to be resentful.

So I didn't play in the 2001, 2002, and 2003 I-Ds, and I won't be playing in the 2004 I-D. But editing the 2002 I-D booklet was interesting. The tournaments usually finish near the end of the year. In the past the ACF games editor then wrote the book, and passed it on to me to proof read, format, and make additions. I never saw the games until March or April. Sometimes the booklet was finished in May. This year, I didn't see any games until August, and Al Darrow (who had volunteered to do it) had annotated only two or three of the games, and many of the games had to be retyped. I took over the job, and refused to accept further help from Mr. Darrow. I sent the completed booklet, which I think is one of the best of my accomplishments (even though it contains a couple of small typos), at the beginning of October, and the ACF will print it eventually.

It is 12/03/03, and the booklet arrived in my mail, and looks good. Most of the delay was that Anthony Bishop (ACF treasurer) had multiple tragedies in his family. I would like to thank Al Darrow for getting the money to Earl Hangen (ACF national mail play director), and I would like to thank Earl Hangen for his great efforts in all of this.

If you need it to read the following, please print out the numbered board.

These two nearly-identical games caused me to do a lot of interesting work, trying to figure out the draw:

Podoff - Sheehan, 2002 I-D
9-13 24-20 11-16 20-11 8-15 23-18 3-8 18-11 8-15 27-24 15-19 24-15 10-19 32-27 4-8 22-18 5-9 25-22 12-16* 29-25 1-5? (8-12 draws according to Al Lyman) 21-17 (draw, Sheehan v. Podoff) 8-12 draw.

A couple of weeks of effort on the part of Harry Meadows and myself has shown that this ending is a White win. Neither Mr. Podoff nor Mr. Sheehan has responded to my queries about this. According to his game sheet, Mr. Sheehan has lost his records of both of these games. I am beginning to suspect that this game was never played, that these two players played some other variation, and were hoping to lure other players into this loss (or keep their other games secret).

These two games ended in a slightly amusing way:

Wold - Sheehan, 2002 I-D
10-14 22-17 9-13 17-10 6-15 25-22 15-19 24-15 11-25 29-22 5-9 22-18 12-16 28-24 8-12 18-14 9-18 23-14 4-8 26-23 8-11 23-18 16-20 24-19 11-16 19-15 16-19 30-26 1-5 (WW! Wold v. Podoff) 32-28 (21-17 draws) Draw! [diagram]

After losing to Podoff, Wold apparently learned of this clever draw: 13-17!! 26-23 19-26 31-13 2-6 15-11 7-16 18-15 6-10! (3-8? 14-10 6-9 13-6 16-19 "draw," by me in the 2002 I-D booklet, but continue 10-7 12-16 15-11! 8-15 7-3 15-18 3-8 WW) 15-6 16-19 draw.

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