Today, on our final Super Saturday of 2022, we once again broke our record for total number of participants! In all, we had 40 participants in the Quads and 30 in the Open for a total of 70 participants. Two notable players in the Open are ICA coaches Igor Yeliseyev, who just competed in the FIDE Senior World Championships, and Justin Rosales, who earlier this morning won 2/2 matches at Marshall Chess Club!
But we must start with the Quads today, as we saw a great display of resilience and character from many of our players today! The most notable example is from Tyler Angelov. After finally receiving his medal from the NJ Grade School Championships, Tyler was motivated to win Section 7. However, he was set back in his first game after a miscommunication with his opponent led to a draw, despite the fact that Tyler was clearly winning! I have seen several players in the past withdraw after suffering from moments like this. However, Tyler was now even more motivated to win: after winning his second game, Tyler then took a calculated risk in his final game by sacrificing his queen to open up the opponent’s king for a ladder checkmate. Therefore, he was able to win his section with 2.5/3 points!
Another player who showed great resilience was Leon Shevelenko. In his final game of Section 3 against longtime rival Andrew Goldfarb, Leon found himself in a tricky position: he was winning in the endgame, but only had seven seconds left compared to 30 minutes for his opponent! If I were to say that Leon was feeling nervous, then this would be an understatement. As this was one of the last games in the quads, the tension was palpable. Even though Leon missed many opportunities, it did not matter in the long run, as he was able to get the job done and tie for first place in his section! **Note: if you think you can win with seven seconds left on the clock, then sign up for the New Years Eve Blitz Tournament!
We must also congratulate Julian Ma for tying for first place with Nicholas Ferrone in Section 1! Actually, their match, in round one, is what essentially sealed Julian’s fate as section winner. In the match, an equal game was decided by a brilliant bishop sacrifice: after 27. Bxg7, the king was completely opened up! As a result, Julian was able to push his passed pawns and involve the rooks in the attack to eventually force Nicholas to resign!
For the first time since I have begun directing tournaments, we had a father and son both win a section! Congratulations to Sachin Goel for winning Section 9 and to Raben Goel for winning Section 4! Raben’s highlight came in the second match, when he used his open c-file to win his opponent’s queen! After 18. ... Rfc8, the opponent played 19. Re3??. After 19. ... Rc1, the queen was trapped!
In both the Quads and Open, today was a very good day for Bergen County Academies (BCA) students and alumni. Including myself, the TD and reported, we had five either students or alumni of the school!
Two current sophomores, Albert Abzalimov and Goktug Bas, shared the spoils in Section 2 after drawing against each other and winning their other two games. Although their match against each other was not very noteworthy, once each player was under five minutes, the game suddenly sprung to life! Each player had mere seconds to think about how to approach a cagey middlegame. In the end, a draw was the right outcome after neither side could break through with opposite-colored bishops.
Speaking of Albert, after what was a very entertaining opening in his final game, he sacrificed his knight to open up his opponent’s king. Even though his opponent did not accept, the damage was already done: after 18. Nb5 a5. 19. Nd6+ Ka6. 20. Qc4+ b5. 21. Nxb5 Qxb5. 22. Rd6+ the opponent resigned after realizing he was about to lose a queen for nothing!
Back onto the topic of BCA, alumni Bowen Huang played for the first time since the start of this semester in our ICA Open. After not playing for so long, getting any sort of result against the fierce competition which the Open offers is impressive. Getting a win whilst displaying free-flowing and creative attacking play is report-worthy! Unfortunately, I will not be able to analyze the entire game. However, I must discuss a prime example of Bowen playing with fire and creatively finding a way to win. After his opponent played 29 ... Qc1+ and Bowen defended with 30. Be1, a checkmate threat was in existence. If Bowen were to move his queen away from his pinned bishop without a check, the game would be over. The game continued: 30. ... Be7. 31. Qe5 f6. 32. Qb8+ Kf7. 33. Qe8+ Ke6. At this point, it seemed as if Bowen almost ran out of checks. However, what he did next is something people mostly see in puzzle books rather than in matches: instead of promoting to a queen and losing the game, he promoted to a knight to make on final check, win his opponent’s bishop, and once again protect his own bishop and effectively end the checkmate threat!
The final BCA player, Ethan Modi, tied for second place with Roman Malyshev, Yefim Tregor, Igor Yeliseyev, and Justin Lee on 2.5/3 points! After winning their first two games, however, four of the aforementioned players agreed to draws after a couple of moves in the opening. As a result, this left the door open for somebody to come in and take sole possession of first place with 3/3 points. The candidate: last edition’s winner, Brian Pang!
I’ll be honest: I found it impossible to put the game Brian let me use to analyze inside the package of my analysis. As I was going through the game, I was surprised by how fearless Brian was of his opponent’s attack, as he was so confident in his own plan! My favorite sequence came at the start of the middlegame: after his opponent played 13. b4, Brian played 13. Nxb4, sacrificing his knight. After his opponent took it with 14. axb4, Brian played 14. ... Bxb4, pinning the knight. His opponent then played 15. Bxf6: a respectable attempt to divert the queen from the attack. Did he care? Not really, he took the knight with the rook with the understanding that, if he did lose the queen, he’d easily win it back with Rxc1, a discovered attack. His opponent castled rather than taking, allowing Brian to take a free bishop!
For this tournament, as we had lots of top quality matches, I compiled each game that I analyzed in the report onto a study on lichess. Click HERE to access it! For everybody reading the report, I highly recommend looking at Brian’s game, as there is so much brilliant chess that I have not analyzed in this report!
Congratulations to all winners!
For the Quads, click HERE to access rating reports, and HERE to access results.
For the Open, click HERE to access rating reports, and HERE to access results.
Our final tournament of the year is our New Years Blitz tournament, which will begin at 12pm on New Years Eve. Click HERE to register!
Our first Glen Rock Quads next year will be on January 7th, while our first ICA Open will be on January 21st.
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