Round 8 vs Loyola

Loyola came to visit us for the final round this season. At this point the league standing was not decided and we had to do our best. It turns out we were able to live up to the taske the result was

    Board 1:  MatthiasPfau vs Iain Clark 1:0
    Board 2:  King Ong vs Peter Dimopoulos 1:0
    Board 3:  Pradeepan Kunhiraman vs Mark Wojtyla 1:0
    Board 4:  Vlatko Primorac vs  Joseph Reiter 1:0
    Board 5:  Jason Sensat vs Steve Solomon 1:0
    Board 6:  Duc Le won by forfeit 1:0

There will be no video links for these games. This said we ended the season on an upbeat note, two 6:0 in succession.

Round 7 vs DRW

It was clear from the start this would be a decisive round. To retain any hope to make it into the play offs we had to win. From a rating perspective the odds where against us. As it turns out ratings are only an indication and this night clearly favored us. So we walked away with 5 1/2: 1 1/2 victory.

• Ted on board seven scored his first CICL victory, congratulations to you.
• Vlatko finshed early because his opponent went for a quick perpetual.
• Pradeepan's game was interesting because his opponent, after screwing up the opening, clearly did not want to simplify into a potentially drawish endgame. As a result he kept playing many suboptimal moves and Pradeepan cashed in on it.
• A similar story transpired on board 2. The second Gorodetsky did not want to settle for a draw and over played his hand leaving his king exposed. King collected the point with the usual cool.
• Jason was the unfortunate one this time. His castled position was ripped apart and material losses could not be avoided any more.
• Duc in superior position gave a knight to tear open his opponents king side position catching him nicely in a mating net from which there was no escape.
• My game turned from an excellent game into a mediocre game into a speed chess game. In the end lady luck was on my side.

There we go, back in contention with two must wins ahead of us.

cheers

Matthias

Round 6 vs HedgeHogs

Happy new year! This was our last round in 2010 and all is well that ends well. At the time the HedgeHogs were leading the East division but we took away a win and that changed their and our ranking. So we start into 2011 in third place. A great accomplishment because in the past 2 years we had to consider ourselves lucky if we managed to stay in the middle of the pack, most of the time we resided somewhere at the top of the bottom third. Also not to be forgotten our two new team members got their first CICL experience. Now I will not comment on all games. The game however that proved decisive was our board 2 King with black playing Tony. In case you are not familiar with Tony let me just say he is CICL!!! He organizes the teams, manages the relations, keeps everyone on track, provides the materials, so in short he is CICL and without him there is no CICL. On top of it he loves a lively game, a good attack and a nice sack. This game was no different. King hung in there, defended and . . . prevailed! Clearly the game of the evening, the game which decided the outcome. Congrats to the team, this was a big scalp to take home.

Round 4 vs AMARS

After a long break from blogging I am back. Work, health, family .... the usual story prevented me from posting our latest achievement a wooping 2:4 defeat. The only point for us was scored by Vlatko, congratulations. Jason and King fought hard to hold the draw, congratulations to you two. I can congratulate my self to the shortest loss in a tournament game and the commentary shows I can only blame myself. After move 20 the position just sucked and I decided to toss in the towl. Pradeepan and Juan fought well unlike me, alas it didn't work out. So there we are 4 rounds into the season, two wins, two losses and a tough round ahead. All in all not bad.


Cheers

Matthias

Round 3 vs North Western

The level of the games was clearly higher than in the previous two rounds. We lost narrowly 2.5:3.5 but looking at the games almost all of them remained in balance through out the opening and well into the middle game. On every board both teams had repeated opportunities to gain a solid advantage. So the outcome had an element of chance and this evening lady luck favored the North Western team.  Below you find our games with some commentary.

In case you like it, or if you have a question then feel free to leave a comment.