Marquee Matchups / Pivotal Performers

Hello everyone! This is Alex Lenderman again.

Should I (or anyone else) be surprised that I didn't play for the first time in five matches, yet our team won the match anyway? Not at all! As I've said in previous blogs, we work as a team and have people contribute in different ways from all the boards. This time it was our manager, Alex Stripunsky, who came up with a big win, beating GM John Fedorowicz in elegant fashion, outplaying him using a strong Knight and taking advantage of Fedorowicz's aggressive Pawn moves. It all came from a calm Taimanov variation, which I don't know extremely well, but honestly speaking I couldn't quite tell who was better throughout until Alex took advantage of a few overly aggressive moves, won a few pawns, and quickly improved to a winning position. He was the first one to finish which naturally gave us a big leg up; not only did we score the first point, but also from a somewhat unlikely source, as we had only scored 1 / 4 previously on the top board, and hopefully this is the start of some real improvement in that regard.

The next game to finish was our young talented Board Four, Alex Ostrovskiy, who was Black and gave a very representable fight the whole game against the very clutch All-Star Board Four from last year, Iryna Zenyuk. It was a Slav Defense whose opening was very similar to a game I had previously played against him, and this time Alex played the middlegame much better. 5... Bf5 was likely a little more accurate rather than 5... b6, but he decided to follow the same basic plan he'd likely seen in my last week's game, though the line with 5. c5 is a little different than the line with 5. h3. Instead of 6... Qxb6 right away, 6... c5 first followed by Nbd7 was better, ensuring that he wouldn't have to lose his dark squared Bishop. As a result of this, White had the two Bishop advantage the whole game in an open position, which made for a very tough uphill battle, but Alex fought very well, and only in mutual time pressure did he finally succumb. However, he put up very stiff resistance and all we can ask from our players is for them to do the best they can, and Alex certainly gave a great effort and try, and we're certain he'll come up with some big wins for us in the future. Hopefully that will happen soon once he makes a few adjustments, gets more used to the USCL, and maybe plays people a little less experienced while having the White pieces :)

So we were tied 1 - 1, but the whole year our biggest strength has been the two middle boards; numbers speak for themselves as on Boards 1 and 4 we are 1 / 4 and 2.5 / 4 respectively (now 2/5 and 2.5/5). However, on Boards 2 and 3, going into the match we had an astounding 8 / 8!. So, I felt confident that on one of our pivotal boards, both matchups between two IM's, that someone would come through for us and indeed neither disappointed. Dmitry had previously struggled a little bit on Board One and chose to mix up openings a little bit against NY manager and in my view, the co-champion for the US Women's Championship, Irina Krush. He played the Tarrasch against d4 and got a slightly worse but very playable position as Black, with a nice time advantage. It looked a lot like a draw the whole game, but Irina, likely due to the team situation, noticing that Eli was up a pawn against Jay, seemed to get a little desperate. Since that obviously meant that a draw by her would at best end up tieing the match 2 - 2 and given their tough 1 - 3 start, Irina probably felt a drawn match was not good enough. Given that she was slightly better, tried to get a little bit fancy with her pieces, probably tried a little too hard to win, over pressing a bit and in mutual time pressure, she tangled up her pieces and a left them too loose. Dmitry found some excellent clutch moves during the pressure period and then found a nice tactic to simplify the game into a winning Bishop vs Knight endgame.

So when Dmitry won, and we were up 2 - 1, obviously we were in great shape. Even though Eli had a little trouble with time management in his game against popular Jay Bonin with Jay posing some strong challenges, Eli still had a better position out of the opening and slowly outplayed Jay to win a Pawn. However, Jay did create a lot of counterplay, and even though Eli was never at risk of losing, he probably made some inaccuracies in time pressure to turn it into a drawn position. However, at that point, due to the match score, Jay had to win. He tried everything possible to do that, but Eli naturally saw his ideas and easily defended against them. In fact, the only one really could have won on the board in the latest stages was Eli. However, Jay ended up trying so hard that he accidentally he lost on time. So we won 3 - 1, which was helpful for our tiebreaks.

Once again I'm very proud of my team and how we won without me in the lineup. A few people joked in their blogs saying that since I wasn't playing, our team wouldn't be able to win, but frankly I didn't like those jokes or find them funny since they implied that the team is all about me which is a big slap in the face to the rest of our team. I am happy we won and proved otherwise, and I am looking forward to the rest of the season. Unless a complete miracle happens, the playoffs should be a certainty so our job now is to try to win the division and get the draw odds and all the other advantages afforded by that. Hopefully we can manage to do that while at the same time testing some different lineups. Until next week then :)

Catching Up

First of all, to all blog fans, sorry for the week's delay as I had many things to do. I will try to make up for it with this one :) First of all, as you might have noticed, I'm 4 - 0 so far in the US Chess League, and my team is also. However, it's really all about the team, and I just do what I can to try to help us win. In fact, every match, I felt that even though I did the best I could and played a decent game, my game really wasn't the most important one in deciding the match. The first two matches, Eli played two excellent games against two very strong masters, outplaying them very accurately. The last two matches, the real hero was our young rising star, Parker Zhao. He came in the third match, without any preparation, but very rested. I feel that's the most important thing for him as the match began at 9:00PM, and it was important for him to be able to keep his focus for the whole game. Stripunsky joked beforehand, telling Parker on the phone, "Parker, you're so unprofessional". But in reality, Parker knows very well how to go about his games. Alex Stripunsky teaches him very successfully, and he plays the main lines, unlike myself, and knows them very well. He almost always manages to get an advantage with White, equality with Black, and most importantly generally feels comfortable with his plans. He studies very late every day, and for him, who happens to be sitting in front of him isn't that big of an issue, and I really admire him for that.

For me though, the only way I tend to be able to win big games is by preparing very hard and playing my opponent a little bit. For example, against Ginsburg the reason I played a decent game is because I told myself: "He plays very well with White and knows theory very well so just do not play the most common lines, do not just make logical moves, and most importantly play patiently. Some people described it as a one-sided game. I would say the only reason for that was because Mark probably played a little bit too defensively throughout, and I really didn't try to take immediate advantage of that, just kept improving my pieces and gaining a bigger and bigger initiative, until he couldn't hold pressure anymore and fell apart. I give Mark a lot of credit for his solid defense the whole game and some interesting positional ideas, but I guess it was just not quite enough. I was especially proud of my moves 17... a4! fixing the pawn structure, stopping b4 forever, and 30... Na7! intending Nb5 to rid myself of his Bishop on c3. You can find that game here and obviously also in Greg's videos and the Quiz on Week 3, where the Na7 move was even headlined.

As for my game vs Enkbhat, I felt I almost had to play the opponent. I know his knowledge of theory is very good, he plays very comfortably when he has a clear plan, and he's a great solid player, very hard to break through. However, I played a slightly off beat line, to try to throw him off a little bit, which was an idea I learned courtesy of my great coach and wonderful person/friend, IM Dave Vigorito, who coincidentally is also playing for the Boston Blitz. I hope we won't have to play each other in Week 10, but either way, good relationships stay either way even if we have to play; as an example take David Ortiz and Alex Rodriguez going to lunch together :) By the way, the line I played against Ginsburg, was also due in big part to Dave as I feel I played this line very accurately and may even add it to my repertoire. So, if you're interested in a strong player/coach who can really help with opening holes and plans, and making a good friend, he's your man! So, all the credit for my 5. h3!? in the Enkhbat game should go to him :) The idea is to play Bf4-h2 and avoid any possible line with Nh5 Bd2 Nf6 drawing. Then after 5... b5, I followed with 6. c5!? blocking up the Center and the Queenside, basically making it impossible to breakthrough in either place. I know that Enkhbat generally likes to play fairly standard chess and so I found a little bit of Emory Tate in myself and made an interesting move 14. g4!? after 13... Nfd7 as that seemed to be a good way to throw him off his game. If 14... Be4, I have a strong line 15. Nxf7 Kxf7 16. Ng5+ Kg8 17. Ne6! Qc8 18. f3 Ne5! 19. fxe4 Qxe6 20. dxe5 +/=. But he instead played 14... Be6. After that it was an interesting game where I castled Queenside, and Enkhbat was brave and took my pawn on the h-file, opening up both my g and h files. He played very well and solidly for a while, until he made an inaccuracy with 23... Ra7?! (a fairly standard move), not realizing the full idea of my 23. Nd2!? idea as he should have traded on d3. So, I ended up playing 24. e4! Qf7 25. f3! totally controlling the center. Then, in this complicated position, I thought 25... g5!? and 26... Bg6 was a good idea, defending h7 and blocking the g-file for a while. The position is still at best only unclear for me. But Enkhbat played 25... Be6, and after 26. Qh2, he found himself in a very tough position. Then, 26... f5 totally shut his play down, as after 27. e5, he's totally paralyzed with no real counterplay. He tried to get some towards the end, but by that point, my attack was simply unstoppable. But again, the real hero was Parker. He came in, Black against a strong master Zimmer, and just played an excellent game, with no mistakes, following every correct plan, including the 25... g5! idea. Michael Thaler did what he was supposed to do: played a good game being a favorite against Ian Harris and quickly beat him. Eli also played a very good game and even got a draw offer from Blehm, being White, but unfortunately Eli tried playing on in a slightly better position, and in time pressure made some inaccuracies and lost. But either way he still played his heart out.

You can't imagine how proud I am to be on this team and to have such great teammates. We have terrific chemistry together, all playing under excellent conditions and just trying to have fun. We have places nearby to eat, and we can have drinks in the club. I love the personality of our team as we are all willing to help each other, from Alex Stripunsky helping me with prepare for my games, to Ben Katz playing his heart out and doing his best to prepare, with which I help him also. I really believe we can do something special this year as I don't see the chemistry and momentum going away.

Hope you all enjoyed this blog for the last two weeks. Until next week,

Alex Lenderman

Getting into the groove

Hello again. I hope all of you enjoyed my first blog and game. My second game was against a young talent from the New Jersey Knockouts, NM Evan Ju, a player who's always given me fits in previous encounters dating back five years. Evan's a young rising star, who is very talented and has always seemed to match styles with me. He also likes to set challenges, play actively, and not give anyone easy games, and I knew that before the game. I honestly felt very tired before I even started the game as I had had a long day, but for me the job was to go about it professionally, just give it all I had, and do the best I could.

Since Evan knows me and my style so well, along with his friends knowing a lot about me, I figured he might have some help preparing for me. So, I decided to go with my rare weapon which I don't use much: the Scandinavian defense! 1. e4 d5!? 2. exd5 Qxd5 3. Nc3 Qa5 4. d4 c6 5. Bc4 Nf6 6. Nf3 Bg4!? (6... Bf5 is played more often, as I had looked at some of GM Renier Gonzalez's games (huge expert in Scandinavian), had realized some basic plans, and had some idea what to do). 6... Bg4 I felt sets more challenges and from my experience, I know that young players, especially those who like to set challenges, don't like to defend. I was fortunate enough to put Evan on the defensive from moves 7 - 12 and force him to eat a lot of time off of his clock. That paved the way for me to always being up 20-30 minutes the whole game, a huge handicap that came in handy, as Evan played very well, set a lot of challenges, played actively, and didn't let me get too much activity. I felt that besides his 13. a3?! move (creating a weakness for no real reason), he played brilliantly and accurately despite being very low on time for much of the game. He ended up outplaying me by achieving a nice initiative which forced me to make concessions with pawn structure weaknesses. Luckily, we already were up 2 - 0 in the match at that point, courtesy of Eli's excellent game against strong master Mackenzie Molner and Ben Katz's excellent opening preparation and miniature against master Victor Shen. I was really proud of them as they set a great tone for the team. Even though I saw Dmitry Schneider was losing to Joel, I didn't feel much pressure at all as all I needed to do was make a draw at that point. This made my goal clear: try to simplify to a drawn endgame if I could, try to go for perpetual check tactics, or to create mating ideas. So, I played solidly and even more actively. Evan was playing great until he got into very deep time pressure, and then I won a pawn from him and followed it up with a cute tactic that I was fortunate enough to spot despite getting into time pressure as well (three minutes vs one) approximately.

You can see the rest of the game here as it was definitely interesting and probably would be enjoyable for you to look at. Anyway, I'm happy I was able to come through for the team and able to win again. Thanks again for reading :) I'm looking forward to continuing this :)