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      Louis Pasteur Memorial: The first two rounds

      The first two rounds of the Louis Pasteur Memorial saw some exciting chess and some upsets. In round 1 David Faulkner narrowly missed a win and allowed Kevin Zhang to escape with a draw. In round 2 Kevin’s brother Arthur Zhang played a beautiful Italian and beat me quite convincingly.

      Things obviously went wrong for me. How did Arthur finish the game in style?

      Artem Aleksenko showed some good fighting spirit in both of his games. In his game against John Wright Artem kept pushing in a drawn rook ending and John, under time pressure, went wrong. In the second round Artem defended with a minute left against Gerald Ruiz assault and the game ended in a draw. Earlier Gerald, true to his name, sacrificed his queen and got very close to winning the game. Artem’s active defense muddied the waters enough to escape with a draw.

      Larry Stevens is faithfully sticking to the Queen’s Gambit Accepted. Manu Prasad went for 3. Nc3

      This is an inaccuracy. Larry treats us to a masterclass on how to exploit this.

      The pairings for round three will be published on Tuesday evening at the usual place:

      https://caissachess.net/live/1027

      Round 1 games:

      Round 2 games:

      Chess Tournaments
      Manu Prasad wins the Aulia Arena Blitz

      Manu played a close to perfect tournament. As usual he was one of the players with most games and he won almost all of them. Chris went berserk and almost caught Manu but fell one point short.

      This Friday we have another blitz event, the La Bourdonnais Arena, the link is:

      https://lichess.org/tournament/1bQ6I2lW

      and the password is as usual:

      sgv

      We are in trying to sort out things with the YMCA. But it seems they need some time to get up and running again. We will let you know when we can resume over the board tournaments. If there is sufficient interest we could have another G60 online tournament, perhaps three rounds in two segments. Let me know what you think.

      Chess Tournaments
      Petrosian Blitz Tiebreakes This Friday

      Last Friday was the last round of the Petrosian Open and as usual we will have a two hour blitz arena event for tiebreakers.

      The name for the blitz arena is Aulia and the link is:

      https://lichess.org/tournament/lF8Uw2LP

      password: sgv

      The fight for first place was decided in the last round. Ariel came close to getting a big advantage against me on board one and catching me before the finish line. Gerald and Arthur are shared second and third. You can check out the final standings here:
      https://caissachess.net/live/995

      The prize fund for this tournament is: 

      1. $30
      2. $20

      This time we will also have a $20 prize for the winner of the Blitz Arena (Players that won money in the main event are not eligible for this).

      The annotated games of the last round can be found here:

      Stay tuned for updates. L.A. county is entering the yellow tier, hence the Mark Rothko picture. We are in contact with the YMCA to figure out what the next steps are.

      Chess Tournaments
      Petrosian Open Round 4

      In Mark Dvoretsky Endgame Manual every chapter features some Tragicomedies. In this round Gerald and I created our very own towards the end of our game. To be fair, we were both down to one minute. When we reached this position.

      I just played Kd6??. How could black have saved himself?

      In the last round all eyes will be on Ariel, who plays me with the white pieces (You can find the pairings here: https://caissachess.net/live/995). With a win he will end up shared first and pave the way for others to do the same.

      Below are all the games of the round with John’s annotation of his game.

      Chess Tournaments
      Petrosian Open Round 3

      Round 3 of the Petrosian Open produced lots of interesting chess. David Faulkner gave a great demonstration of the power of bishops. And Larry demonstrated his knowledge of Queen’n Gambit Accepted structures. Randy showed us that there is always hope in rook endings. Artem and John gave us an example of not quite everlasting symmetry.

      Enjoy the games. John provided the commentary for most games.

      Chess Tournaments
      Petrosian Open Round 1: Stumbling towards Victory

      Round 1 of the Petrosian open treated us to some exciting games and all games were decisive. I leave it up to you to decide who had the rockiest start. Have a look at the annotated games below. John and I did the annotations.

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