Our match will now be played on July 18, Sunday evening. Rapid starts at 6:00 pm and Blitz at 7:15 pm. Sorry for the many changes!
Club League Round 5
Our upcoming match against Borba Gato Chess Club of Brazil is tentatively set for Friday, July 16, at 7:00 p.m. The match is played on Chess.com and you can find updated info on Season 3 of Club League at our Chess.com San Gabriel Valley CC site. Just click on the Club link and then “ News.”
Louis Pasteur Memorial Round 3: Openings gone wrong
In this round we were treated to some very good games. Randy and Artem worked together to create this beautiful cluster of knights in the center.
You can find the pairings for the last round here:
https://caissachess.net/live/1027
The pairings will be finalized on Tuesday evening, so for the moment these pairings you find there are preliminary.
The winner and the top <1800 player will get prizes. Since we might resume over the board chess games soon again we probably won’t have time for a tiebreaker this time.
Some of the players joining our online tournaments live too far away to join us for OTB tournaments and some players might not be ready yet for indoor meetings. If there is some demand I am more than happy to continue to offer online tournaments. We might have to opt for another time though. Please let me know what you think and send an email to: sgv.chessclub@gmail.com
Here are the annotated games of round 3:
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:
Louis Pasteur Open Starts Friday, May 21st
This will be a 4-round Swiss, G60+10. All games will be played on Lichess. Sign up here:
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.
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:
- $30
- $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.
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.
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.