Playoff Semi-finals: Primates lose to Discovered Mates

We square off against the Discovered Mates and for me I play against Andres Hortillosa, an expert from Minnesota.

As stated in prior entries, one of the best benefits to the 45 45 league is that it provides you incentive to study/prepare for specific games. For example, if you know your opponent plays a certain line in the Dragon, you can really prep for the game, which will (hopefully) translate over into stronger OTB play. In this match, I knew Andres plays the mainline Ruy. Now let me digress for a second: I am fascinated by the Ruy from both sides (same with the King’s Indian). I find the richness and variety that these defenses produce truly intriguing and can spend hours poring over games and analysis – which I cannot say the same about other defenses (Petrov’s & Queen’s Indian for example). So, when I saw that Andres would go for the Ruy, I leapt at the chance to play it. And the game was memorable, but not the way you would think. We delved 19 odd moves into theory, got into a very interesting middlegame with chances for both sides, and then he tragically “mouse-slipped” his queen (meaning he had a mouse slip and placed his queen accidently where he would lose it for no compensation) and resigned. Really not the way I wanted to win.

Our 2 lower boards have both lost, Darren in an interesting Scandinavian where his opponent’s 2 bishops proved to be stronger than Darren’s Bishop+Knight combination. Curt also lost in another interesting Ruy Lopez, this Ruy being a Marshall attack, where Curt could have sacrificed his queen for incredible winning chances (but in fairness to him, I never would have seen it either – only after having Fritz look at it did I see the idea). So we sit at 1 – 2 with Tom’s game tonight. So in fact we may draw, but I have to check the tiebreak situation.

Well Tom played his game and could not quite pull off the victory. His opponent, knowing that Tom needed to win, played the Berlin variation of the Ruy. Tom responded with the Worrall Attack, sacrificed the exchange, picked up a pawn and was threatening to grab another when he hung a piece. I suspect Tom was overpressing as he had declined his opponent’s earlier draw offer. So another season closes with our defeat in the quarterfinals. Not bad as we had to claw out of the cellar after the first 2 rounds in the tournament in order to qualify for the playoffs. I have 3 goals for every tournament:
No forfeits
Make the playoffs
Most importantly: Have fun & enjoy the camaraderie of team match play.
We achieved all three goals and I am already planning for Tournament 43, which will start in about a month’s time.

Quarter-finals Round up: Primates 3.5 – Runners 0.5

Playoff Quarter-finals: Primates v Runners U2000

It figures. If we are playing in the 4545 League, we at some point should play the Runners (I believe we have played them a total of 5 times in three tournaments). Pairings will be up on Tuesday, but I suspect that I will face “Chiiwen” again, against whom I have never won (but most if not all the games have ended in draws).

So, you may ask, how did things go?
Everything seemed to go right for us in this round; I am not sure whether that bodes well for the rest of the playoffs --- or not. I played arguably my best round in T42 against an old time nemesis (that is meant in a friendly, jocular sort of way), Chiiwen, We have played 3 times prior and I have yet to notch a win against him (2 draws and 1 loss). In fact the 2 draws were both with me as white and I could not dent his super solid Accelerated Dragon setup. So, knowing that we more than likely would play another Accelerated Dragon AND I would need to push for the win, I spent some extra time coming up with a sharper line to play against it. It seemed to catch him by surprise and I came away victorious in a very tense struggle. Once my game was over, Tom quickly followed suit with a win, then Darren’s opponent forfeited the game, sealing the match victory. In a somewhat ant-climatic finish, Curt and his opponent agreed to a draw before the game started but couldn’t figure how to work out the mechanics to do a “GM draw”, so they played one move and then agreed to split the point.

Round 6: Primates beat Kingfischers57 & make the Playoffs

You could almost say Primates “backed” into the playoffs. This division has been incredibly tough every round, and the top three teams have had the same score (or within a half point of each other) since the first round. Even the fourth ranked team, XXXXX, won as many games as the second placed team. Little wonder then that the Primates would have to win the round to assure qualifying for the playoffs. If the Primates drew our final match, then we would require some assistance in the form of the other match drawing 2 – 2 in order to qualify based on better tiebreaks. I started off first, playing the black side of the Ruy Lopez Worrall attack against Eurander. Unfortunately for Eurander (and fortunately for me), I had anticipated the line we would play and I had also played a game that went down an analogous position. As a draw was my initial goal, I was never in real trouble and even took a draw being a pawn up. In retrospect I should have pushed for the win, however, the last thing I wanted to do was blow the position, lose the game and put my team in a hole – especially given the fact that Eurander, rated at 2250, was a solid 200 points higher rated than me.
But then things got ugly as Tom had game #2 and lost against another 2200 rated player, putting us in a 0.5 – 1.5 hole and requiring Darren and The Other Bob to win both their games. Darren was the first to play, winning in convincing style and leaving it up to the Other Bob in the finale, which he did in a tense battle.

Round 5: Primates 2.5 – 1.5 Point-Blank

Well I finally won a game, but not in the way I had wanted or asked for. I was matched against David Barnesly again, having lost to him just a couple rounds ago in a completely winning position (that is meant as a compliment to David, who hung incredibly toughly in a grim position and ultimately and deservedly won). So I tried to set up a mutually acceptable day & time for the match, David was out of town and could not respond in a timely fashion. After a bit of negotiation, we failed to agree on a time and I was awarded the forfeit win.

Round 4: Primates draw with Masagatsu Agatsu 2 – 2

I took the week off (work travel) and the team again drew the match, which should have been the result given how closely everyone was paired in ratings – 3 of the 4 boards were within 10 to 15 rating points. Bob was the odd man out, playing his opponent 120 points higher than him. Tom had the one victory of the match, easily winning.

Round 3: Primates 2 - Team Poinblank 2

Here was the lineup :
Campagnolo (2061) 0 - 1 DavidBarnsley (2060)
Nosalt (2051) 1/2 - 1/2 topadyarpov (1930)
Ivanson (1859) 1 - 0 Nosferatu1 (1864)
Budzo (1697) 1/2 - 1/2 Brainwave (1741)


We split the point with Team Point Blank, but I play the worst game humanly possible, making 2 incredibly stupid errors: getting in time trouble (I mean really bad time trouble) and avoid getting mated trying to avoid a draw. Bleah. I overpressed in a winning position, but failed to negotiate the tactical nuances of the position and realize that I can either drop a rook or get mated. But the worst part of the whole game is that I had drawing possibilities even after losing the rook (Thanks, Fritz, for showing how bad I can play. On a side note, computers can be a wonderful tool to analyze and research, but sometimes they can really depress you with their flawless ability to show the obvious).

So after Round 3 we sit tied in 2nd - 3rd spot, trailing the leaders by a match point. Not worth stressing at this point, however we need to start "firing on all cylinders" if we want to make the playoffs.