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    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:

    Clubs League Season 3
    Chess Club News
    Clubs League Season 3 Returns June 12!

    We are pleased to announce that SGVCC will once again participate in Club match play on the Chess.com site. This is your chance to show your club pride and share in the thrill of team match play.

    Each match consist of two segments: a Rapid game at 15 plus 2 second increment followed by a Blitz game at  3/2. All games count the same and you can play in both segments or just one if you prefer.

    The event will consist of seven matches played over  seven Saturdays starting June 12 thru July 31. July 10 is set aside for a makeup day if necessary. The match starts at 10:00 a.m. PST and generally ends by 11:30. Registration is open 1 hour before the start time and you can play as few or many matches as you like. We are asked to let the other team know how many players we expect each week and you can send that message to Team Administrator John Wright at JRWright on the Chess.com site. Again, it is fine if you can’t play at the last minute and this is just a way to let the team captains organize things so everyone hopefully gets a game.

    Our first two seasons in Club League have been great fun and it is one of Chess.com’s most popular events. We have played clubs from all across the U.S., Mexico and South America. We hope to see many of you there!

    Chess Tournaments
    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.