Round 5 featured a tough fight for the top spots. Hamlet had the chance to catch me in the final round to win the tournament but an opening surprise in game one and a relentless clock in game two thwarted his efforts.
Randy also employed an opening surprise in his match. Facing John’s Slav he played 4. Nbd2. A tricky move, if black doesn’t play energetically this knight will get access to powerful squares. John reacted well and soon his queenside pawns were storming ahead. In game two Randy was under some pressure and used a positional exchange sacrifice to stop John in his tracks. In the end John was down to 6 minutes against Randy’s 18 minutes and decided not to tempt fate and acquiesced to a draw by repetition.
Chris needed a strong showing against Arturo to secure a top-3 spot. In game 1 Chris got a fantastic position out of the opening. Arturo chose a very passive d6 in the classical Ruy Lopez that gave Chris a free hand to build up a dominant position across the board. Arturo put up a creative resistance and managed to trick Chris into repeating moves. To avoid the draw Chris’ King had to leave safety, pick up a pawn in the middle of the board and return to safety. All this with black’s potential mating combo of queen and knight in the vicinity. With a minute left this is a tough call. In game two Arturo stayed true to his opening convictions and started with 1 f4. On the one hand a narrow opening repertoire allows the opponent to prepare for the match and Chris picked the combative Fromm’s Gambit (1. … e5) to counter Arturo’s Bird opening. On the other hand people that play the same openings all the time tend to know their lines and it’s difficult to really surprise them. Arturo declined the Fromm’s Gambit with 2. e4. In the resulting King’s Gambit Chris mixed up two lines and Arturo got a King’s Gambit dream position which he easily converted to a full point. After their match Chris and Arturo were clearly not done with each other and started an epic blitz match, not a bad way to spend a Friday night.
As a result of these three matches we have clear first, second, and third places.
Congratulations and many thanks to all the players that helped to make this tournament a success.
Below you find all the games of round 5 with some comments.
On Friday the 23rd of October at 7pm we will be hosting a 2h blitz arena. The name of the tournament is Soltis Arena and the password to join is: Lasker
On the 30th of October we start our next tournament, the Steinitz Open, a 5 round Swiss tournament with a time control of G60+10. Please note, this will be a classical Swiss tournament with only 1 game per round. Also note the change of time control.
Take advantage of the early bird sign up and register here:
https://caissachess.net/online-registration/edit/878
Let me know if you have any issues signing up.