2007 World Open: Exterminator is Back!

 

A determined William Morrison takes a swig during battle. The “Exterminator” scored 7-2 to tie for 1st in the under-2400 section. The blitz legend has returned in full form. Photo by Daaim Shabazz.

Many people have been wondering what has happened to William “The Exterminator” Morrison. In an interview with The Chess Drum, he actually said (ala Arnold Schwarzaneggar), “I’m back.” The New York/Maryland legend has made an auspicious return to tournament play and routed his opposition with an undefeated 7-2 at the 2007 World Open. “I prepared for this tournament,” he asserted. He also mentioned that he went into the tournament with the right frame of mind. Watching Morrison throughout the tournament, one can see that he had fire in his eyes. “I was very confident. At one point I had a rating of over 2500, so I had a lot of confidence to do well in the under-2400 section,” he added.

In this tournament he had a couple of games that he noted… wins against Slavisa Peric and Dmitri Shevelev. Morrison also had an exciting game against Nigerian Champion Chikwere Onyekwere. He told The Chess Drum of the young champion, “He tried to come after me.” Onyekwere had a solid tournament with 6-3. Morrison also stopped a torrid Vishnuvardh Arjun (who earned his first IM norm) before ending by drawing Ilya Figler.

There was actually a 5-way tie for first resulting in a lucrative prize. Morrison stated in the interview that he plans to pursue his last IM norm, but that earning norms in the U.S. is exceedingly difficult. He suggests that a grassroots effort to popularize chess from the ground up will be the way to attract sponsors and thus, provide more opportunities for big tournaments.

Listen to interview!

4 Comments

  1. Mr. Wijetunge,

    I use a tool called Palview, but it is not the most intuitive java board out there. There are many others, however, in my opinion it offers the widest range of features. ChessBase’s java generator does not even come close. Mychess.com is the other popular one, but it doesn’t allow annotations and nested variations. Most of the ones out there only allow you to view games and are not designed for website development.

    The Palview developers have not updated the code for a couple of years, but no other java board provides the flexbility that Palview does. It is feature rich and looks nice, but it is something that you have to have some computer savvy to use properly. You have to understand .css style sheets and such. Read more about it at the Palview Pages. The documentation is extensive.

  2. Thanks for the great interview. Thanks to the drum for keeping the beat going and the drum community for encouraging Darrian Robinson at the world open.

    When the fellows get together for the matches, Mr. Morrison, don’t forget the girls. Medina Parrilla and Darrian Robinson to name a few will ge able to play hard at the board.

    Mr. Morrison, Darrian was grateful for your introduction and well wishes when you saw her at breakfast.

  3. this is a repeat performance for William, about fifteen years ago william won the u2200 section at the world while reading the newspaper, mind you u2200 means u2200 fide too. that’s one of the obstacles in that section beacause u2200 fide is about u2300uscf!! pop johnson his friend would say william would play openings from his own reckopning that would be subnotes in the opening manuals to the mainlines. A very talented brother. Look to the future successes from mr morrison!!!

    Bob

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