In this weekend’s tournament, despite only having 40 participants, we split the competition into two rooms to give the top players more privacy for their matches. Although that sounded like a good idea in principle, as Jonathan and I were watching the big room, Artem came in and asked to get moved due to the sunlight interfering with the game. We then moved him into the big room, assuming that would solve the problem.
Ten minutes later, Yefim stormed in and screamed, “Sun! Sun!” Both Jon and I ran into the smaller tournament room along with Yefim to realize that the sun was in the eyesight of many of our players! We, as a result, moved his board from one side of the room to the other. Realizing this would be a problem for the next round as well, Jon and I set up another room for the three sections, with all players relocating to that room for the remaining two rounds.
Despite the mishap, the quality of the chess was not affected. After hearing about the return of our report contest, Yefim took the opportunity to analyse his match - winning free entry in the process!
Hello from Yefim! I am going to tell you about the importance of individual work in Chess in comparison with just computer preparation. The picture above (from the recent December David Ostfeld tournament) shows a game from my two favorite openings – “King Indian Defense” and “Modern Defense”, - especially when Black sets his knight on d4. This knight supported by bishop g7 (and often with pawn e5) is a very strong piece. A computer does not always understand this fact. Chess players feel such positions much better. For proof I will comment on my game with Suja played in a quad on 16st of December 2023. In this game I managed to set a d4-knight twice and get a very attacking position. Computer evaluates the positions after that as equal or even better for White but I will explain my opinion and hope you will agree with it.
Tune into tonight’s episode of The ICA Show, where Thomas Isernhagen and FM Justin Lee will join to analyse two matches!
Section 1 Report by Yefim Treger
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