perfidious: <Benzol> Most of Wetzell's opponents listed herein were familiar to me, somehow or other. Never met Guillermo Rey, though I recognise him as being a strong player.From the top: Frank Deming is an exception, so far as I remember.
Allan Bennett and I met a number of times at the board and often played the same events-he has the FM title and his play as Black is classical, with some offbeat opening choices, a la Arthur Bisguier of earlier days.
Seeing Barbara Peskin's name here rather surprised me; her father, Myron (Mike) was a well-known organiser in Massachusetts in the mid-late 1970s before dying suddenly at a relatively youthful age.
Nasser Abbasi played a bit in the early-mid 1990s and was ~2300 US.
At the time of the game, not sure how strong Rigel Cappallo was, but when we played in the 1996 New England Open, he was ca 2250. He was very young then, probably still in his teens. His father Roger was then in the 1900s.
Bill Aulson was someone whom I never met at the board-typically he was playing under-1800 sections while I played open groups-but was a nice guy, about 1700. Bill died in the late 1990s, I believe.
John Loyte got into the low 1900s if I remember aright, but there was a lot of variance. John was a slashing, attacking-type player whose form was very uneven. We played together in the Framingham club in the 1980s and sundry tournaments in Massachusetts, but never actually met at the board.
George Mirijanian is ~2050, but far better known as a tournament director than player. The only venue I know of where George plays on a regular basis is the Wachusett club in Massachusetts. While we knew each other, going back to ca 1975-76, I have actually never seen George play.
The name of Brad Ryan rather surprised me, though I was well acquainted with him from the 1980s at the Boylston Chess Club, then located in downtown Boston on the fringes of a seedy section known as the Combat Zone. Brad was probably 16-1700 strength. Always jovial, with that resonant voice, ruddy complexion and thinning white hair. Pleasure to be around, same as a few others in those days.
Also knew Rolf himself-we met twice at the board, the first game, from a Monadnock Marathon, opening 1.d4 d5 (which I never played back then, but was familiar with my opponent, who was then playing the Veresov) 2.Nc3 f5. Wound up a manoeuvring game where neither side got much going-drawn in the end. Our second go-round featured my speciality with 5.Bg5 against his Gruenfeld. My recollection is that Rolf played inaccurately in the middlegame, fell into a passive position and I ground him down.
Kibitzing
