2022 ICA Super Saturday Quads October 15Th

October 15, 2022, Glen Rock Quads and ICA Open Report

Today, yet again, we broke our recent ICA Open participation record, with 26 participants vying for the grand prize! In addition, we had 32 participants for the ICA Quads: those participants were split into eight sections, with the top two being played at Game 45.

The best player in the first round of the ICA Open is Florina Zhu, who defeated a much higher player to claim the win! Florina demonstrated an excellent ability in this game to open up the position before overwhelming the opponent by attacking a file and a critical square with four of her pieces!

The game progressed: 18. Rcf1 cxd4. 19. R1f4 Qh6. 20. Rxf6 dxc3.

Here, even though Florina was only up a knight, white was clearly winning due to the severe pressure being put on the f7 pawn. The game progressed: 21. Nxf7 Qxf6. 22. Rxf6 gxf6. 23. Nxd8+.

At this point, the game was clearly won by white.

The best player in the second round has to be Michael Kang, who just like Florina previously, defeated a player approximately 300 rating points higher! The game had a very wild feel during the start, as both players had extremely poor pawn structures as a result of the aggressiveness of the opponent. However, nobody was able to break through ... until black made the first mistake.

After black played Kf8, Michael (playing as white) played 20. Bxa6. After realizingthat he cannot take the bishop back (the reason why will feature in a coming episode of #tacticstuesday on Instagram and Facebook, see if you can figure out why before then!), the game progressed: 20. ... Rg8. 21. Rxg8 Kxg8. 22. Ke2 Nc4. 23. Bxc4 Rxc4. 24. Qxb7 Qxb7. 25. Qxb7 Rxa4. At this point, Michael was up a pawn heading into the endgame: he comfortably used this advantage to win Game 2!

Congratulations to Yefim Treger, Ethan Modi, Pardhav Chakka, and Luke Mulvey for splitting the victory with 2.5/3 points each!

In the ICA Quads, the player of the tournament is Mark Kogan, who won Section 1 with 2.5/3 points! His highlight came in the final match, where he utilized a bishop sacrifice (the Greek Gift) to bring his other pieces into the attack and overwhelm the opponent.

A very honorable mention goes to Andrew Goldfarb, who won Section 3 with 3/3 points! After winning the first two games, Andrew needed to conjure up a brilliant move to break down the defense of his final opponent. And he successfully did so, by sacrificing his knight to eventually win the queen via a fork!

Congratulations to all winners! You can see rating reports by clicking on Open or Quads.

All results can be found at Open or Quads Don't forget to sign up for next week's quads ahead of time!! CLICK HERE TO REGISTER!

Thank you to everyone who came to the ICA Open (1600+ rating)! The next edition will be held November 19: CLICK HERE TO REGISTER!

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