Congratulations to all the participants! It was a full day of interesting chess that went by very quickly! After 5 lively rounds starting at 10am and ending right on time at 1pm we had our winners!
1st place with 5 pts: Artem Aleksenko
2nd place with 4pts: Josh Pinchuk
& in 3rd place with 3 pts: Peter Graham
Select Games from Jan 13th
Note: many moves may be incorrectly recorded or missing. Most endings are not recorded due to rules allowing no notation under 5 minutes. Analyses by lichess.com.
Billy Zifchak vs. Stephane Derveaux
A balanced opening if not a somewhat messy game. Both players missed free bishops. After 11. Bf4??, 11…e5 would have won the bishop with a fork, And after 17…Be5?? 18. Qxe5 would have also won a bishop for white with the d6 pawn pinned by the d1 Rook, and ultimately black made the blunder (27…f5??) that gave white the chance to win.
Jacob Kim vs. Joseph Burns
This was a really sharp game but white lost the game early on with 6. Bd2?? The best move is Nxc6 which is a book move for the sharp mainline of the Scotch opening. This blunder ultimately left black up a knight and rook after move 11. After trading queens the endgame began with black up a rook. Finally, a fork with 31…b5! ended any hope of white’s survival. White found checkmate 5 moves later.
Minus the early error, both played very well. Lichess gave white 85% accuracy with 29 average centipawn loss while black had 99% accuracy and 10 centipawn loss! Almost every move in the endgame was an excellent or best move.
Stephane Derveaux vs. Joseph Burns
This started off with an unconventional response to the English opening 1. c4. Black tried to open up the queen side with the Scandinavian defense 1…d5 which was not the engines favorite move. White steadily increased the advantage until 23. Bd2+?? landing on a square guarded by the knight on e5, but black missed it! There must have been some tunnel vision when white played 23. Bd2?? likely aiming for a potential checkmate threat with Bb4. But black caught it this time and white was knocked back with 23…Nxc6. There is no notation after move 28, but white won. One possible continuation saw an interesting checkmate by pawn promotion from the advanced e pawn, but black had ways around it.