COMMUNITY

I-10 chess showdown comes to Alamogordo

Matt Grinberg
Special to the Alamogordo Daily News

The Eighth annual I-10 Showdown chess match between teams from West Texas and southern New Mexico was held in Alamogordo for the first time.

Minister Johnny Cox said the tournament was held at the Christian Church of Alamogordo on Saturday, Oct. 10. It started at 10:10 a.m., thus making it the I-10/10/10/10/10 Chess Match. 

The match was organized by Augustine Valverde and Will Barela. 

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Valverde had the lion’s share of the work as organizer, tournament director and playing sixth board for the West Texas team.

The I-10 Showdown was an idea that initially came from Bill Daly of Las Cruces. 

Daly proposed having an annual eight-board, two round team match between players from southern New Mexico and West Texas. Matt Grinberg came up with the idea of calling it the I-10 Showdown since I-10 connects El Paso with Las Cruces. 

Going into this year’s match, southern New Mexico held a 4-3 lead in previous matches.

In the rear from left to right are Matt Grinberg, Steve Perea, Jake Ornelas and Kirk Baloun.

In the front are Manny A. Castillo and former New Mexico Girls Chess Champion Sophia Moore holds the I-10 Showdown Trophy that was donated by Heart of the Desert Pistachios and Wines.

Unfortunately, due to “present circumstances,” West Texas was not able to field a full eight board team or as strong a team as in the past, so the match was reduced to six boards. 

The extra southern New Mexico players played a small tournament on the side. 

The I-10 southern New Mexico players held a United States Chess Federation rating advantage on all but board five. 

Each game was tough, but in the end southern New Mexico prevailed 5-1 in the first round and 6-0 in the second round. 

Southern New Mexico won by a score of 11-1.

Of the southern New Mexico team members, Matt Grinberg (board 1) and Larry Horgan (board 5 round 1) are from Alamogordo, Jake Ornelas (board 3) is from Ruidoso, Steve Perea (board 2) and Kirk Baloun (board 6) are from Albuquerque, Sophia Moore (Board 4) and Manny A. Castillo (board 5 round 2) are from Las Cruces.

All the West Texas players, Ray Estrada (board 1), Mario Valles (board 2), Alejandro Garcia (board 3), Marco Limas (board 4), Johnny James II (board 5) and Augustine Valverde are from El Paso. 

Johnny James II was the one player to win a game for West Texas.

The chess communities on both sides of the border are looking forward to a match with both teams at full strength in 2021.