Jim West On Chess: Lenderman 5-0 at Marshall CC

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Lenderman 5-0 at Marshall CC

Recently, GM-elect Alex Lenderman has been almost perfect.

In late November, Lenderman won the National Chess Congress 2009 in Philadelphia on tie-breaks. A week later, he won the ICA Early Winter 2009 Open in Hackensack, with a 4-0 record. Now, after the first weekend of the Marshall Chess Club championship, he leads the tournament at 5-0.

Lenderman is still a GM-elect because FIDE is undecided whether to accept one of his three GM norms where it appears that last-round pairings, not involving Alex, were made to favor players seeking norms.

"My study of chess was accompanied by a strong attraction to music, and it was probably thanks to this that from childhood I became accustomed to thinking of chess as an art, and have never regarded it as anything else, for all the science and sport involved in it. And, moreover, an art which in some ways is closer to music than it is customary to think. Perhaps chess and music are drawn together by laws of harmony and beauty which are difficult to formulate and difficult to grasp, or perhaps by something else." - Vasily Smyslov