Axel Müller – Page 4 – San Gabriel Valley Chess Club

Member Analysis: The Son of Sorrow

Our first online Swiss tournament produced a lot of interesting games. I went over a few games in my last post already. This post features one of the games played in the Randy-Lisa match.

Randy, the rating-favorite, started the game with 1.d4 and Lisa immediately started to fight back by choosing the King’s Indian Defense. Randy killed any hopes of a black pawn storm against the white king by picking the fianchetto system and soon afterwards the game entered Benoni territory.

The game offers a number of instructive moments. Randy was determined to show why this opening is called “Son of Sorrow”, hurled his d, e, and f pawns forward, and eventually crushed through black’s defenses. But in the process the white king got pretty exposed himself and black was not without counter chances.

Anybody who would like to learn more about counter chances in the Benoni should have a look at the games of the late Vugar Gashimov. One of the few elite players that consistently played the Benoni.

I hope you find my comments somewhat useful. If you want to see one of your games featured here, please let me know.

But now without further ado

Chess Club News

Instructive moments from our first online Swiss

We managed to play 56 games in our first online event. I’m very pleased that we got to see some very interesting fighting chess. The lower rated players certainly made their higher rated opponents work for every half point. I certainly got lucky more than once.

Below you can find some of the interesting positions that occured. You can find the solutions to the questions and more here on lichess.

Black took command of the position. What’s the best way to proceed?

In the next game black got a very good position out of the opening unfortunately the tide turned and we reached this position:

How should white proceede?

After a tough struggle we reach the following position. White to move and win:

White didn’t go for the kill in the previous position and a few moves later we reach this point:

Can black escape his fate?

In my game against Raphael I got a better position but suddenly we reached this position:

Raphael just played Qd4 threatening everything. Should white resign?

I just took a pawn on e4

Which knight should black take? Or should he play something different all together

There were many more interesting games played in this tournament. If you want to see one of your games published here please let me know. For more analysis head over to lichess. Once there become a member if you aren’t already and join our San Gabriel Valley Chess Club lichess team.

You can also play through the complete annotated games here.

Don’t forget next Friday we will have a 2h Arena blitz tournament on lichess. More on this soon.

Chess Club News

First San Gabriel Valley Chess Club Online Tournament Finished

Last night we played the 5th and final round of our first online Swiss. Each round the opponents faced each other in two games one with each color and a time control of G25 and a 10 second increment. Most of the games were played on chess.com the rest was played on Lichess.

Here are the final standings:

Our second 5 round double Swiss will start on September 18th. Rounds will start Friday nights at 7.10 pm and the tournament will be held at https://lichess.org. More details will be posted soon.

On Friday, September 11th, we will have a 2h G5+5 event on lichess. If you haven’t already done so, join our lichess team:

https://lichess.org/team/san-gabriel-valley-chess-club