2022 ICA Super Saturday Quads September 24Th

As the weather is rapidly cooling, ICA Tournaments are the place to be during the weekend! And this proved to be the case today, as we had 44 participants split into 11 sections, with four of them being played at Game 45!

The first winner of the day was David Barbiero, who won all three games in Section 10 in his first ever tournament! As a result, he is the player of the tournament! David had a knack for punishing his opponents for their mistakes: when his final opponent moved her bishop away from the king, David was able to capitalize and create a checkmate in two moves!

An honorable mention goes to Colin Hu, who won all three games in Section 5! In one of his games, each player had a rook and four pawns left on the board. After the rooks were traded, Colin had the opposition, and used it to capture his opponent’s pawns and promote his own.

There were many instances today of players going into the endgame down a pawn, but still being able to turn it around and win the game.

The prime example occurred in Leon Shevelenko’s final game in Section 3. In that game, Leon was down a pawn in the endgame. However, he knew that the position of his rooks was stronger than his opponent’s rooks. Both players were able to promote their pawns into queens. However, before promoting, Leon realized that his opponent’s king was going to end up in between the two queens! This meant that, with a skewer, Leon was able to capture his opponent’s newly promoted queen to win the game. The critical moment of the game is shown below:

45 ... Re3+ (forcing a rook trade and allowing black to control the d1 square). 46. Kxe3 Kxd1. 47. e6 fxe6. 48. fxe6 Kc2. 49. e7 d1=Q. 50. e8=Q Qe1+.