Today, we had 36 participants split into nine sections. This number is significant because, although lots of people understandably took the weekend off due to the Team East Tournament last week, many new faces brought lots of positive energy, especially in the bottom sections.
One of those new faces is Samuel Strouse, who won Section 8 with a perfect score! His highlight of the day came when he was down a piece (this will become a recurring theme throughout the report), but cornered the opponent's king. As Sam described it, “I just ended up winning.” Evidently, when in doubt, just attack the king!
Meanwhile, although Arjun Raina does not compete often, he seems to win every time he does! This time, he won Section 4 with a perfect 3/3 points. His highlight came when he used a discovered check to win his opponent’s queen! Although this tactic works well now, as his brother, Abhay Raina can attest to, things will only get more difficult from here on out. Although Abhay did place second in Section 3, only losing to eventual winner Nivaan Shrivastava.
But the player of the tournament is Artem Valyaev-Kunitsky, as he was able to win Section 2 with 2.5 out of 3. More importantly, however, Artem was able to win whilst playing all three games and not withdrawing early.
Artem was able to provide an analysis of his match (white) against Geoffrey Chen (black).
Geoffrey started off the much better player after catching Artem completely off-guard by capturing his e-pawn whilst creating a discovered attack via the queen’s attack on the knight on h5. Geoffrey then continued his assault on the kingside, after which Artem mistakenly ran away to h1 with the king rather than f1. As a result, Geoffrey was able to finish off the attack up two pawns.
But Artem did not give up: rather, he focused his attention on one weakness - the f7 square - and began attacking it.
The attack started with 21. g4, forcing the knight to move away. Artem then doubled up on the f-file and quickly removed the defending pieces to eventually score the goal to tie the game: 26. Bxh6 to gain back a pawn and pin the g-pawn to the king. As a result, Artem was able to get his rook onto the sixth rank and win back the pawns that he initially lost! The resulting position: a beautiful pawn structure for Artem, and doubled e-pawns for Geoffrey: there was no way for the black king to get involved. As a result, Geoffrey found himself in zugzwang; every move would lead to a defeat. After it was clear that Artem would break through, Geoffrey resigned, giving Artem the win!
Congratulations to all winners: click HERE to view rating reports!
Our next Quads will be held next Saturday, March 4. Click HERE to register!
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