2022 ICA Super Saturday Quads September 17Th

Today, we were able to shatter our ICA Open participation record, with 25 participants competing for the grand prize! In addition, we had 38 participants competing in the weekly Quads! They were split into 9 sections, with Section 3 being played in a Swiss format.

The player of the weekend has to be Maxim Farberov, who was the only player to win all three games in the ICA Open! In his final match, Max gained an early advantage. However, his opponent was very defensive and would not concede anything else to Max. Eventually, Max was able to break through and win the queen!

In addition, FIVE players finished the day on 2.5/3 points! Those players are Roman Rychkov, Luke Mulvey, Fred Wilson, Alexander Wang, and Ian Nicholson. Two of those players, Alex and Roman, generously provided an in-depth analysis of one of their games!

In Alexander Wang’s second game, in which he was black, Alex’s opponent broke his pawn structure; while Alex’s pawns were on e4 and c4, his opponent had a passed pawn on d4! However, this dramatically weakened the opponent’s king. As a result, Alex was able to use his bishop and queen to attack the f2 square. Alex then snuck his light squared bishop onto f3 and forced a trade of bishops, which not only further weakened the opponent’s king, but also put Alex’s pawn on f3. Finally, after applying so much pressure, Alex was able to deliver a back rank checkmate with the rook!

In Roman’s first game, in which he was also black, nobody was able to get the advantage early on. However, Roman’s opponent constantly tried to probe and weaken his structure. After the opponent opened up the kingside in order to initiate an attack, Roman was finally able to counter and expose the weakened structure.

Meanwhile, the player of the ICA Quads is Albert Abzalimov, who won all three games in Section 2! In one of his games, despite being up a rook, Albert’s opponent had two passed pawns on the sixth rank ready to promote! After perpetually checking his opponent’s king, however, Albert was able to attack those passed pawns with his rooks and king. From there, he captured the pawns and finished the game clearly up a rook.

An honorable mention goes to Thomas Holder, who won Section 3 with 2.5/3 points! In one of his games, Thomas had a rook and a pawn against two bishops. He was able to capitalize on his opponent’s extremely weak pawn structure by first attacking and capturing the isolated pawns, and then by winning extra pieces.

And last but certainly not least, the ICA hosted two players as they competed in the online FIDE series: NM Matan Prilleltensky and IM Candidate Niko Chasin each played two games against higher rated Bulgarian opposition virtually via zoom and chess.com. Matan finished with 1.5/2 points, going undefeated! Meanwhile, after losing the first game, Niko was able to pull together and win his second match!