In the last February tournament, I played unsuccessfully, but some aspects of the competition pleasantly surprised me.
First, I won the so-called a miniature game - it lasted only 11 moves. Second, since the game ended very quickly, I had almost an hour of rest before the second game and enjoyed a nice meal. Third, as it turned out later, I won against the tournament winner, who, after losing to me, went on to win his next two games.
As for the game itself, I will say the following.
Mauricio, my opponent in the first round of the quad, is a rare participant in numerous competitions of ICA. Probably because of this he quickly lost his game, not realizing that he got trapped in my favorite “e6-pawn pattern”. If he played regularly in ICA tournaments or at least read my reports, he would know my specific style of play, characterized by many traps. Let’s briefly comment on this game by all its 22 positions shown in the picture (except the initial position).
Position 6. Mauricio played d6-d5, but in my opinion this was a dubious decision, since after this move Black lost a tempo (his d-pawn moved to d5-square by two steps instead of one step).
Position 8. Mauricio traded his c5-pawn for my d4-pawn. Why did Black help White to activate his knight? It was better to play Nb8-c6.
Position 10. Black played a7-a6 and allowed a powerful pawn shot e5-e6. And it does not matter that the e6-pawn pattern was not very effective in this concrete situation due to the Black’s possible accurate play. The point is in the following. Every time Black allows this powerful e6-pattern, it has to be calculated specifically, but my opponent played very quickly not thinking much about consequences.
Positions 11-18. This was almost a forced variant for both of us. At first I thought that White would achieve a nice position, but then I saw in position 18 the Black’s move Nb8-c6 and understood that I could not take a black queen because after trading both queens my d8–knight would be trapped! For this reason many of us would not play e5-e6 in position 11, but for me it was like a sacral action! By the way, if Black had played 9…Nb8-c6 I would have responded by 10. Qxf6!
Position 18. In this position Black might (and should) play Nb8-c6. If he had played such a move, White could not have played Qe2 (or Qe3) because of the variant 9... Bxe6 10. Qxe6 Nd4 with 11…Nxc2. Instead in position 18 Mauricio had committed a decisive mistake; he played 9… Qb6 and after 10. Nc7+ Kd8 11. Nxa8 immediately resigned.
But as I said above, somehow this loss stimulated Mauricio to play much better the next two games, so he won them and became the winner. Congrats, Mauricio! But next time be careful of “trapping guy”…
Finally, I noticed that the tournament results led to a rare and interesting mathematical problem. “If there are three players, A, B, and C, where A defeated B, and B defeated C, one would expect that A should also defeat C”. However, it turned out that C won against A. A paradox! You can determine the names of these players (A, B, and C) from the tournament results (there is a hint – A and B are me and Mauricio).
If anyone has other interesting mathematical puzzles, please share them with me - I am very passionate about mathematics (so it is not only about chess!)
Congratulations to Yefim Treger for winning our report contest, and a free entry to the tournament. If you want a chance to win a free entry into our Saturday Quads, email a report to icanewjersey@gmail.com, following these guidelines. We hope you guys have had a great week and we hope to see you at our next Quad which is March 1. Enjoy and we hope to see you soon!
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