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Today we had another great turnout, with 36 participants split into 9 quads. Three of the sections were played at Game 45, and the others were played at Game 30.
I am especially impressed with the resilience that every player showed today! In every section below Section 3, there was no clear winner: instead, the prize was shared between either two or three people per section!
One example of this resilience was shown in Kate Stripunsky’s final game against Luke Shin, in which the winner would win Section 5. In the game, Kate was down a bishop. Despite this, she pushed her passed pawn all the way to c7, equaling the advantage!
Moreover, in Gillian’s final game against Colin, the “winner takes all” game of Section 4, despite being down a pawn, Gillan was able to keep the position closed and deadlocked. Eventually, after no player was able to break through, the competitors agreed to a draw.
However, one player was able to break through and claim sole position of first position: Andrew Goldfarb, after blundering to lose his first match, came back to win Section 3 with 2/3 points! In his final game, Andrew started off on the defensive, escaping a barrage of attacks via his own checks and discovered attacks. Afterwards, he was able to checkmate his opponent’s king by attacking with two pawns!
But the player of the tournament is Angelo Valentino, who won Section 1 with 2.5/3 points. In his final game, Angelo put his opponent into zugzwang in the endgame. From there, he was able to create a passed pawn and eventually win the game.
In addition, NM Matan Prilleltensky returned to play two FIDE matches against tough Bulgarian opposition. Although he was only able to get one draw today, he will have two more games tomorrow! |
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