tournament report : Classical Thursday March 2022 - Round 2

With @datasmith being a bit strapped for time, I volunteered to do this week's summary report. A winter storm overnight left the ground covered with that frozen water that I do not like, but my generator was working and I had a lot of time on my hands, so I decided to try my hand at annotating everyone's games from this week. I fully expect that there are many ideas and plans that I've missed, but thanks to Stockfish the tactics should be pretty solid.

E3Engineer (2073) vs SonicFalcon (1848): 1-0

Our #1 seed E3Engineer won a very interesting game against SonicFalcon. This contest featured some very instructive moments, including as early as Black's 5th move:

After getting a nice advantage, White's 15. h3? gave Black a chance to get back into the game with queenside counterplay, but Black missed the last move of a sequence:

With queenside counterplay shut down, Black did an excellent job of creating tactical kingside chances due to dark square weakness around White's king. Unfortunately, a tactical error in a very complex position occurred, and the game ended quickly.

Overall, this was a really fun game to analyze, so thank you to both players.

hodjon (1488) vs. BigData1969 (1992): 0-1

Your author had the Black pieces against hodjon. Both sides tried and refused to play a closed Sicilian, and after sub-optimal moves by both sides in the opening, White missed a pawn fork and had a lost game by move 12:

Then things got very tactical and fun, as Black used the extra material to attack the White king, which White completely ignored and instead attacked the Black king! There was a neat little trap that White could have set that is worth reviewing on move 20.

White's aggressiveness from a lost position is to be applauded - cause problems and complexity when you are down. As Tartakower said "The winner is the one who makes the next-to-last mistake."

datasmith (1792) vs. SAUSJULIAN (1419): 1-0

The leader of our motley crew played a very solid game after Black allowed a pawn weakness in the opening. White correctly opened the position, denied the Black king safe haven anywhere on the board, developed the remaining pieces with tempo, and finished with a pretty checkmate.

chavezo (1295) vs. dennisbouchard (1783): 0-1

The players engaged in a fighting Italian Four Knights. There were lots of fireworks, tactics seen, tactics missed, and overall quite a tense battle. With a winning position, Black's efforts to simplify could have met with a tactical refutation that put White ahead, but White was not able to find the continuation, and Black brought home the full point.

I had a great time digging deep into everyone's games, as well as learning how to create a blog on lichess, which continues to impress me more each week. Hopefully I made some observations that are useful - I feel I learned some things from my time doing this analysis. Good luck to everyone in Round 3 this Thursday!

- Ron