Master Camp Week 7 Report

Seven chess players joined the master camp this week.  Six of them made up the round robin tournament, while Aharon fulfilled a special program for learning endgames.  Along with this, as usual, there was a blitz tournament, problem solving contest and sports competition.  The favorite of the tournament were experienced Vedant, who came back after a 6 week break and young talents – Merrick, second by rating, and Justin who improved significantly during the last two weeks.  Vedant showed his class again and captured the first place scoring 4 out of 5.  Merrick came in third with 3 points having blundered in his game against Daniel.  Seven year old Justin must have been tired and played without success sharing the last place.  One can consider it a sensation that second place went to Nikita Popov, who scored 3.5.  He was the only one who beat the winner of the tournament fairly without blunders on Vedant’s part.  He could have scored even more if not for his gross mistake in his game against Michael Aksen when he blundered in the absolutely winning position leaving his queen under attack.  Nevertheless, he was able to draw this game after creating a fortress with a bishop and pawns against his opponent’s queen.  This week, Nikita showed pretty solid play and deserved his great result as well as serious increment to his rating.  The only thing he has to pay attention to is his excessive hastiness at certain moments of his games.  Daniel Khaitov skipped one day because of illness and had to play two games on Wednesday (in fact against two strong players - Merrick and Justin). This was a trial for him, but he coped with it very well winning both games.  Unfortunately for him, these were his first and at the same time last victories in this tournament.  He scored only half a point in the remaining games and ended in the middle of the tournament cross table.  Michael Aksen’s negative performance came as a surprise.  He put a lot of effort into his games and played pretty well.  However, he scored only one point by drawing two of his games.  One can say it was not his week.  Aharon, who was rated 200 points higher than the next highest rated player, joined the group for the blitz tournament.  Nobody could compete with him.  Moreover, he dropped only 1.5 points out of 24 games he played.  The heroes who took these 1.5 points were Justin, who drew his game, and Vedant, who won his game.  The interesting part of the tournament was the rivalry for second place.  Almost until the very end Vedant, Merric and Justin took turns leading the race.  Only at the finish line was Vedant able to break away with 13 points.  Merric, who won third place, lagged a point behind.  Half a point behind Merrick was Justin.  Nikita finished 5^th having scored 5 points.  Daniel was a point behind.  Michael was last.     

In the problem solving contest Aharon was the clear favorite.  Therefore, a decision was made to award the second place winner as well.  So Aharon scored 23 points while Justin, who captured the second place, scored 13 points.  Michael was out of luck for the second week in a row, finishing 1 point behind Justin.  In sports nobody could beat Vedant .  Even though he competed with a handicap against other participants in some sports (running, jumping), he eventually overtook the second place winner Nikita by 5 points.