Today, we were able to achieve our highest tournament attendance of the month, with 51 participants playing in 12 sections. Although we had some very competitive matches in the lower sections, leading to lots of two-way, three-way, and even one four-way tie, I will focus on the matches played in the higher section.
Our undisputed Section 3 winner was Nivaan Shrivastava, who won with 2.5/3 points! It is also worth mentioning that Nivaan arrived late due to standstill traffic en route to the competition. Fortunately, this did not deter him as he drew his first match and won the second.
Speaking of that second match, Nivaan was able to build up a slight positional advantage throughout the game. After 25. Rf1, the opponent finally broke, and took the rook with the queen. What he didn’t realize, however, was that the knight was attacking the queen, meaning Nivaan easily won after winning a free queen!
After a month long layoff, Thomas Isernhagen returned to our Quads to storm to a perfect 3/3 points in Section 2! What made his victory even more special was that all three of his opponents were higher rated and older.
His highlight came, ironically enough, when he was in a losing position. Despite going into the endgame down a pawn, he saw he had a massive advantage off the chess board: his opponent only had eight seconds left on the clock! He used the time difference to his advantage: by planning ahead, Thomas was able to march his pawn and king up the board, forcing Andrew to sacrifice his rook. This sacrifice didn’t help, as Thomas was easily able to win afterwards.
But before we leave Section 2, Andrew Cerami called me the night after the tournament asking me to publish his final round victory in the report. And so I will, with his analysis.
In this game, Andrew played his favored London System as white. The game was even until the sequence: 10. e4 Bxg3. 11. Hxg3 dxe4. 12. Nxe4. Nxe4. 13. Bxe4 f5. 14. Bxc6+ Qxc6. 15. Qe2. where white was positionally better off. Black’s bishop was inactive and the king was inactive, while white would be able to attack with the knight and, eventually, with the two rooks. After a mini pawn storm and rook stacking on the h-file, Andrew found the following tactic: 26. Rh8 Rf8. 27. Rxf8 Qxf8. 28. Rh8 Qxh8. 29. Nf7+ Ke7. 30. Nxh8 Rxh8. 31. Qe5 Rh2. 32. Qxg7+ Ke8. 33. Qxb7, winning both the queen and bishop!
Last but not least, after a few poor results this month, Mark Kogan emphatically bounced back today with 2.5/3 points to win a very competitive Section 1! Although he was the highest rated by a distance, he was able to prove why this is the case against some very difficult competition to give positive momentum for next week’s ICA Open!
In fact, he played an opening that his coach taught him that very morning! This opening led to massive tension in the center, but Mark played the right sequence of moves to gain a positional advantage. After the opponent opened up the king too early, an early exchange of bishops completely blew the kingside open. Mark was then able to bring his Queen and Rook to expose that open g-file and force the opponent to sacrifice the queen to prevent an immediate checkmate. From there, Mark was able to continue his attack to win the game, and the section!
Congratulations to all winners: click HERE to view rating reports!
Our next Quads will be held next Saturday, March 25. Click HERE to register!
In addition, we will be hosting the ICA Open next Saturday at Glen Rock as well! Click Click HERE to register!
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