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    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.

    Chess Tournaments
    Rubinstein Open: Missed Opportunities in the Penultimate Round

    Round four was characterized by unforgiving fighting chess—or lucky escapes. You decide for yourself.
    Here are the games:

    The current standings and pairings for next round can be found here:
    https://caissachess.net/live/960

    The top three players, overall and rated under 1800, win $50, $30, and $20 respectively. 

    As usual, the Friday after the final round a 2h blitz arena will serve as a tie breaker.  

    Chess Tournaments
    Rubinstein Open Round 3: Doom in the Center

    Some of the games demonstrate the dangers of falling behind in development. A subset of these games feature kings stuck in the center. Artem and Gerald found themselves in a very challenging and educational rook and bishops of opposite colors endgame. Artem was kind enough to annotate their game for us.
    Enjoy the games:

    Pairings and standings can be found here:
    https://caissachess.net/live/960

    Chess Tournaments
    Rubinstein Open: Drama in Round 2

    I would like to thank Gerald, John, and Artem for annotating some of the games.

    Gerald and John played on board one. Enjoy the game and the winner’s insights:

    The other games with annotations can be found here:

    Standings and pairings can be found here:
    https://caissachess.net/live/960

    Chess Tournaments
    Rubinstein Open: High Participation and Passionate Games

    19 players signed up for the Rubinstein open. That is a new record for our online tournaments. As some of you may have noted we are running a Swiss tournament with accelerated pairings. As a consequence we saw highly competitive pairings in round 1 already.

    This time I got help from John Wright with the game annotations. Here is his game against Larry Stevens

    The rest of the games are annotated by John or me. You can find them here.

    If anyone would like to annotate their game or any other game please let me know. We all can learn from each other.

    I will post the final pairings for the next round tomorrow night. Just keep an eye on our tournament website:

    https://caissachess.net/live/960

    As you may have noticed this link is the same throughout the tournament. I just posted preliminary pairings. Unless I get a bye later today or somebody else joins the tournament the pairings won’t change.

    Competitive Chess Play
    Chess Tournaments
    Raymond Armagnac wins the second Sierra Madre Open

    Congratulations to Raymond Armagnac for winning the second edition of the Sierra Madre Open. Starting with three wins it was enough to draw the last two games to cruise to first place. Lawrence Stevens, Arthur Shao Zhang, and Arturo Armagnac tied for second and thus giving us an exciting tiebreaker this Friday.

    As in our last tournament we have cash prizes for the top two players overall ($50 and $30) and the top two players under 1800 ($30 and $20).

    The battle for second prize will decide how many under 1800 prizes will be available. If Arturo Armagnac repeats his fantastic blitz performance Rafi Andranigan will clinch first in the under 1800 category and Artem Aleksenko second.

    Make sure you all sign up for the blitz arena:

    https://lichess.org/tournament/KaTMtSlb

    The password is: sgv

    It might be a good idea not to wait till the last minute for sign up. I might not be there for the start of the arena to help out. It might also be a good idea to read the rules for the arena, if not you might be surprised why some people only get half of the time playing you.

    Here are the annotated games from round 4:

    And here are the games from round 5:

    The pairings for the next round, standings, and results can be found here:

    https://caissachess.net/live/910