Happy New Year and welcome back to ICA! This weekend, we had two tournaments: The Glen Rock Quads and the Livingston Quads. At the Glen Rock Quads, we had over 50 participants: a good start to the year. This report contains entries from players of different levels - from Section 1 all the way to Section 11!
***We will not have any more shows until the final week of January. This will allow our staff to prepare for the new streaming cycle, which will include using more streaming platforms and a wider range of activities during each show; stay tuned!***
SECTION 1 REPORT: BY Yefim Treger
All the best to the chess students of ICA in the new year 2024! But the celebration is over and it is time to study chess more deeply. I have decided to show some interesting ideas in the openings. Pattern recognition is one of them. In particular the picture above shows the e6-pawn pattern, which had occurred in my game with Sujia.
E–pawn pattern occurs in such openings as Alekhin defense or
Pirc defense – see two diagrams on the left side. Its idea is to
constrain the opponent’s possibility to develop pieces normally and explore a weakness of f7-square near the black king. I particular in both left diagrams Black cannot take e6 pawn by c8 bishop because of d5 move. The right position also shows e6-pawn seriously weakens the black king. That will be detailed in my game with comments below.
SECTION 2 REPORT: BY Benjamin, Nunez
Hi my name is Benjamin and I am 10 years old. Today I played in section 2 and it is the highest section that I had played so far. The first game was very interesting and I would like to show it to you.
I was black and my opponent, Justin, played the classical Italian Greco gambit.
We got in line that I was familiar with and we got in an equal position.
When I pinned the knight to the queen in move 12, Bg4, white played h3 and then attacked my bishop again after, Bh5 then Rc5. Now I was worried because his pieces are starting to get active.
My idea in move 16 when I played Rad8 was to attack my opponent's rook because my rook will be pinning the pawn to the queen when my queen gets out of the way and if he doesn’t do anything about it I could play Rd7 and then Rfd8 and start to put pressure to the d4 pawn.
On move 17 instead of Qd7, I could have played Qe7 so as to keep the attack on the rook.
My idea with Nb4 in move 19 was when he takes my pawn on c7 I could then play Bd3 and then fork the knight and rook. But my opponent played 21 Qc3 attacking my knight and then the plan didn't work anymore.
I let my pawns be doubled in move 22, gxf6, because I won a pawn and now we were equal in material.
My idea with Ra8 in move 26 was when they play Nb5 I play Ra5 and then pin the knight to the rook.
After move 27 I was under 5 minutes on my clock, and started to get in time pressure.
I missed in move 30 a way to win a knight can you find it?
Black to play and win a knight
I couldn’t find it on the board but when I was looking over my game I noticed b6 I could attack the rook and then when they play Ra4 and can play Bd7 and after, Rh6 Nc6 and my opponent lost a knight. I sadly didn’t play that and instead attacked the knight straight away with Nc8 and missed Nc6 and instead of winning a piece got a trade that I didn’t want.
In move 35 I couldn’t play Kg8 or Kg6 because they play Ne7+ and I would lose the bishop.
In move 44 I played f5 because in Ned6 I can play Nc3 and then pick up the a4 pawn.
In move 53 I thought I could play Ne7 and then Nc6 and protect the b8 square but I missed after Nxa5 and then I couldn’t play Nc6 because my opponent's knight was stopping it. Here I had 3 seconds on my clock.
At the end my clock went out of time on move 56 but white had a promoted queen and in a couple of moves I will be checkmated.
After that unfortunately I lost my other 2 games and came out with 0 points. Looking at the results it was not my best tournament but I’ve learnt a lot. I need to improve my time management. In my first game I had 5 minutes on the clock on move 27 and my opponent had ~ 30 minutes left. That really put me under pressure during the endgame. The second one is that I should continue working on thinking about what my opponent can play before I play my move. This is something I have been working on in my classes with WGM Irina Levitina and it’s paying off on the board.
SECTION 11 REPORT: BY Adthyuth Chandrasekar
I‘m the yellow T Shirt in the picture
Hi my name is Adthyuth Chandrasekar and i’m from Woodbrook Elementary school in 3rd grade, and in the first round I played with Carson, and he gave a tough fight but at the end he made a mistake moving his rook to attack my Bishop letting me to promote my passed pawn into a Queen, and after 2 moves has been played he resigned because he saw after anther 2 move I will trap his rook making him lose by a queen and a rook. In the 2nd round I played with Grace, also a strong opponent. After 38 moves she had a knight and 2 pawns and I had one pawn and then she captured my pawn with her king letting me to capture her knight with my king. After that she still had 2 connected passed pawns but she made a mistake and I captured both of her pawns making a draw and I was lucky. In the last round my opponent was Dhruv and after a few moves has been played he moved his rook to attack my queen totally forgetting that I can capture the rook with my Queen and when his Queen captures back my rook can then capture his Queen with my rook giving a checkmate by back rank weekness.
I analyzed the game and these are mistakes I played
1. Don’t put yourself in a pin because I put myself in a pin I lost a whole Bishop
2. Don’t lose your pawn needlessly because in the end games you will need pawn to at least promote one into a Queen.
SECTION 11 REPORT: BY Grace Chen
Hi everyone, my name is Grace. This is my second year at ICA and it is exciting to share my first game report with you. In game #1 I was white playing against Dhruv Kethini. In this game, I played the Italian opening, one of my most favorite openings so far. I started by pushing my pawn to e4 and my opponent did the same (e5). Next, I developed my knight to f3 and my opponent brought out his knight too. I placed my bishop on c4, it's a great square because it aims right at the king's side. My opponent responded by placing his bishop on c5, so that’s the Giuoco Piano variant. And I prepared to control the center with c3. He brought out his other knight to f6, attacking my center pawn. Then I played d four to challenge his center pawn e5 and his bishop. This is when my opponent made a mistake. He took my e4 pawn with his knight thinking that it’s free. So I took his bishop on c5 in exchange, and his knight captured my pawn on c5. This trade led to a 1-point material advantage for me and I was up a bishop.
And because my bishop was attaching his queen, he brought back the c6 knight to block the attack, possibly another mistake, because he could have blocked the attack with f6 attacking my bishop, but now with knight to e7 his queen is surrounded tightly by all his teammates. After I captured the free pawn on c5, he played f6 to fork my knight and bishop. But my knight could go to f7 to attack my opponent's queen that cannot move anywhere. So now the queen is trapped and captured. Later on, I traded my light-square bishop with his d pawn and knight, and then captured his other knight. And after that, my opponent put this rook on e8. I was able to pin the bishop on the d7 square by moving my queen to d5 and threatening Qxd7 checkmate. Then, my opponent made a bad move. He played Re7 to protect the d7 bishop, but I moved my queen to take the rook on a8 and deliver the checkmate.
In the third game we played the Italian opening again like in Game 1 except this time I was playing black against Carson. After some developing moves including both of us castling on the king side, his move of bishop to d5 triggered a series of trades, which led to his loss of a knight in exchange of my e pawn. I also felt good about opening the e-file and getting a chance to be active. He tried to put some pressure with their queen on g4, but I responded with Qf6, supporting my bishop under attack and eyeing the long diagonal. He used c1 to attack my bishop and I responded with d6 to free my c1 bishop and attack his queen. He perhaps thought I made a mistake for not protecting my d4 bishop, so he decided to capture on d4 with his pawn, and I was lucky to capture his queen now that he made a blunder. He quickly resigned after making a few more moves and losing the other bishop and a pawn. It was a great win for me, and I was happy with how I played the game.
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