A reminder about the September Weekend on the 15th and 16th of September. There are 9 Games of Rapid and 9 games of Blitz over 2 days. Entry and more information is online
The ACC Winter Cup is two rated Swiss grades over 7 rounds.
Winter Cup 2018 Round 2 PGN by Alex Nagorski and Tim Ha, with help from Simon Lyall and plus a game from Paul Macdonald annotated by Paul himself.
A Grade
The rating gaps were still several hundred points in most games so a lot of quick wins. But there were several upsets.
Mike Steadman vs Alex Nagorski – Black carefully handled White’s 1. b4 opening and then got a nice discovered attack down the e-file when White’s Queen was sidelined. White active pieces were then swapped away and Black got a winner attack. 0-1
Paul Macdonald vs Daniel Gong – See the PGN for Paul’s full annotation. White got a passed A-pawn and pushed it through to Queen. 1-0
Allen Fan vs Jordon Lewis – Black lost a piece to a tactic and resigned on move 16. 1-0
Akshay Sharma vs John Duneas – Similarly to the last game, White lost a piece to a tactic and resign a few moves later. 0-1
A Sriram vs Nathan Goodhue – Black poked some holes in front of White’s castled King and then won a piece as White tried to defend. 0-1
Alphaeus Ang vs Rodney Li – Black played 11 moves of theory but White started turning up the pressure. A missed tactic by Black and it was all over. 1-0
Gordon Morrell vs Virginia Milne – Black lost a piece in the opening. 1-0
Mathew Steadman vs Tim Ha – White played fairly well but allowed Black to pick up a couple of pawns. He then resigned. 0-1
Simon Lyall vs Xinyang Liu – White got a slightly better position but missed the continuation. The game swapped to a drawn endgame which White almost lost under time pressure. – Draw
Abraham Deng vs Bill Undy – Black was winning but made one little slip and allowed White to get a piece. 1-0
Roy Seabrook vs Felix Xie – Black got a big attack and squeezed White. White sacrificed a rook but Black brought more pieces into the attack. 0-1
Don Eade vs Arkadi Polyakevich – Some pretty pawn chains in the early game (see diagram). White broke through an attack against Black’s King and won enough material to win the game. 1-0
Andrew Michael vs John Pakenham – White had a good position with a mean looking group of pawns going through Black’s position but swapped into an even King and Pawns endgame. Black missed the best moves however. 1-0
David Ansell vs Aaron Wang – The players castled on opposite sites and attacked each others King. White looked better but wasn’t able to finish his attack in time. White mad a mistake in the endgame and lost. 0-1
Winston Weng vs Philli Park-Tamati – Black neglected his defence to attack White. When the dust cleared White was a piece up. 1-0
Upsets in Round 2:
Alex Nagorski beat Mike Steadman
Felix Xie beat Roy Seabrook
Abraham Deng beat William Undy
Paul Macdonald beat Daniel Gong.
5 players are in the lead on 2 points – Allen Fan, John Duneas, Nathan Goodhue, Alex Nagorski and Paul Macdonald
B Grade
Kelvin Xiao vs Olivia Dong – A lot of errors by both players but Black was ahead most of the time and ended up two pawns better in the endgame. 0-1
Joe Wang vs Anya Thurner – After a very locked up game White picked up 3 pawns and Black resigned. 1-0
Compared to A Grade there were relatively few upsets in B Grade.
Philbert Zhai beat Stephen Peters
Hannah Xu beat Uday Jain
5 players are undefeated in 1st place – Joe Wang, Hugh Gao, Boyuan Zhang, Olivia Dong, and Kenny Zhang.
Possible Draw for Round 3
For entertainment only
