People’s Chess Tournament 1977 — Master/Expert
Incomplete record. This archive holds 53 games of this event; the others are missing, and the number played is not established. The archive preserves 53 scores. Published Swiss results prove additional played draws, but the full number of games actually played is not established.
Walter Browne won the Master/Expert section of the fourth annual People’s Chess Tournament with 5½/6. Yasser Seirawan finished second on five points and John Grefe third on 4½. The archive preserves fifty-three scores from the thirty-nine-player section.
The Berkeley weekend
Alan Benson organized and directed the tournament over February 19–21 at the Berkeley YMCA. Browne earned $515, Seirawan $309 and Grefe $154. Nick de Firmian, Paul Cornelius, Jay Whitehead and John Watson each scored four points and shared the remaining Master prizes.
The Master/Expert section had 39 players. Separate A/B and C/D/E/unrated competitions had 65 and 64, making 168 entrants across the tournament. The final report also distinguishes a separate intercollegiate competition won by Jim Waugh of De Anza College. Those contests are not extra Master/Expert stages.
Published final totals
Walter Browne 5½; Yasser Seirawan 5; John Grefe 4½.
Four points: Nick de Firmian, Paul Cornelius, John Watson, Jay Whitehead, Richard Bustamante, Viktors Pupols and Daniel Switkes.
3½: Jeremy Silman, Craig Barnes, Charles Maddigan, James Blackwood and Nick Ballard.
Three points: R. Newbold, C. B. Jones, D. Berry, P. Whitehead, P. Enright, T. Dorsch, E. Burris and R. Blackmer (the archive retains Blackmar).
2½: A. Mamlet and J. Pope (San Francisco). Two points: P. Cleghorn, W. Batchelder, B. Menas, N. Wood, B. Chesney and R. Robinson.
1½: James Tarjan, M. Burkett, Z. Baroudi and R. Hobbs. One point: A. Kanamori and M. Anderson. W. Kennedy scored ½ and W. Trosclair zero.
What survives
Chess Voice prints all thirty-nine final totals, but opponent-by-opponent results only for the top fifteen finishers. Those rows contain thirty pairings without scores in the approved archive, including five ordinary draws. The full number of games actually played remains unknown because the lower field’s round records, defaults, byes and withdrawals are not fully documented.
The native Seirawan–Browne score is recorded as 0–1, whereas both players’ third-round cells and final totals in the contemporary table give a draw. Its 101 plies end after 51.Qf3+. The native event and round headers attribute that exact mainline to this occasion; no independent original full score endpoint was found. The record retains the native result and moves with this conflict visible. The published final totals remain the historical authority.
Original game dates and rounds remain unchanged. Three native round labels differ from the printed Swiss table. The table itself prints a Browne–Bustamante draw in Browne’s row but a Browne win in Bustamante’s reciprocal row; both final totals and the native score agree with the latter. The final report names the YMCA, while the earlier announcement named the university Faculty Club.
Result
Published final totals cover all 39 Master/Expert players. Only the top 15 six-round result rows are printed. The archive holds 53 scores; a complete played-game census is unknown. A native Seirawan–Browne 0–1 conflicts with the original reciprocal draw record.