Our first disappointment

Hello everyone, thanks for reading my blog for Week 6.

Week 6 wasn't as kind to us as the previous weeks had been and obviously the result speaks for itself. First of all, we had to use a slightly compromised lineup, because a few key players were unavailable for the match; we had a rating average of only 2339 which was the lowest we had used all season by far. However, we still felt confident because Dmitry was coming off a big win while I was feeling good about my preparation and chances in my game. I also felt confident that Michael Thaler would put up a great fight against a strong, somewhat proven player from Carolina, Ron Simpson, and I definitely thought we had good chances on the last board with a good team player, Ben Katz, with White against a player below 2200.

Unfortunately it didn't quite work out as well as we hoped. It all started with our internet connection not working at the club due to a wire issue meaning we had to play with a huge mental handicap with Stripunsky relaying all our and our opponent's moves on one computer. It was very annoying and messy and our concentration level clearly wasn't at the same level that way. There was even a relay error late on Board Four which killed our chances for a comeback from a tough position for Ben.

I really felt that we had great chances on all our boards early on though. Dmitry had a better game, Michael Thaler had a slightly better or at least even game, and Ben Katz had a decent position. They all had put in good preparation and had played well early, but unfortunately playing under conditions like this, it would affect any player and when at this level, if you're even at slightly lower than your 100% strength, it makes a big difference. Michael ended up getting outplayed, probably playing a little bit too defensively in a good position. Lev Milman defended outstandingly against Dmitry's nice opening preparation, and the game fizzled out into a draw. Dmitry put a lot of pressure and fought hard, but it was difficult in a complicated position to come up with the most accurate moves. Unfortunately, Ben confused one opening line slightly, and there followed by a Pawn blunder in an already worse position in a Fischer's variation of the Caro-Kann. So even though I won, we obviously still weren't happy about the result of the match, but at least we only lost 1.5 - 2.5 so our tiebreaks weren't hurt that much. The most important thing now is to put this match behind us and do the best we can next time to improve on what went wrong this time. Hopefully, one main thing will be the internet working better :) Our next match is a very crucial one against New Jersey, who even though we did beat the first time, are very dangerous, and they're breathing down our neck with 4 / 6. So it's really key for us to try to at least draw this match to stay ahead of them, but at the same time of course we want to play the best we can and hopefully get a win, to push our lead even further.

Now, speaking about my game, I can tell you all honestly that I would've been extremely surprised if you told me it would get even third in the Game of the Week rankings. I never even had a thought that this game might actually win GOTW :) Obviously I want to thank the Judges for it, but as Greg Shahade rightly said, I would have rather had the team win than the award. The interesting thing though is that I thought that this was actually the worst game I'd played in the USCL thus far. Beforehand this game seemed like a probably must win for me, given our compromised lineup and along with the stress of the internet not working made me feel very tight. I really felt that my game against Mark Ginsburg was much better than this game for sure. Anyway, this game started off softly, a c3 Sicilian, as I had looked at Tiviakov's games to see his plans and how he generally went about playing this line. Unfortunately, according to Alex Stripunsky, I still played the opening poorly. The h4 - h5 plan was way too aggressive as I honestly just forgot that he could just develop his pieces from the Queenside first and then castle Queenside, without having to play Be7, allowing Qg4. I tried playing it like a Caro-Kann, but even with a closed center, Oleg all of a sudden started attacking me on the Queenside. That definitely made things dicey for a while, but then I found some nice creative moves. The move I'm most proud of was 13. Rh3; the reason being all the ideas behind this rather unusual looking move. First of all, I wanted to keep the option of playing Rg3 or Rf3 later on to pressure his Kingside pawns, like in the Caro-Kann, with my h pawn fixing his Kingside (naturally of course after moving the Knight on g3 somewhere as it was basically useless at this point). Also, it defended the d3 and c3 squares which was extremely important for me the entire game. I always had my Knight on c3 defended and able to safely play 18. b3, kicking his annoying knight on c4 out. I also later came up with the 16. Bc2 idea, where I was able to leave my d4 pawn en-prise because if 17... Nd4 18. Nd4 Qd4, I'd have 19. c3 followed by 20. Nb5+ and if 20... Qc5, then 21. Rc3. After that, the game got pretty crazy, but I felt I did have to be very creative and come up with many things on the spot to try to both defend and put pressure on him at the same time. Fortunately for me, Oleg got into a bit of a time pressure, with all my unorthodox moves, and then he got a little too aggressive with 19... f6?!. After this I calculated some key variations, and they all seemed to work out well for me as I got a clearly better game and ended up, after the messiness, having the key passed pawn on h5. This eventually gave me the game as it tied his pieces down, and then I slowly shifted my own to put pressure on him on the Queenside. It was a tough fight for sure, but let me make one thing clear: I would've played the same exact way regardless of how the team was doing because to me I simply was playing the moves that I thought were the best. During most of the heat of the battle, the team was still not losing, and we still had a great chance to score in the match.

So even though this was clearly a tough sea-saw battle, I must admit that there were a lot of inaccuracies there, including my opening and technique inaccuracies, and I probably wouldn't have given myself more than a one or two in the GOTW rankings, because as I said, I felt the Ginsburg game was far more clean, smooth, and accurate. But via this game, I was able to see by example, exactly the three judges have totally different styles. Jon Hilton seems to be mostly of a fan of nice, smooth clean positional games and upsets as well as nice opening preparation. The fact that he ranked my game against Ginsburg third does mean a lot to me, and obviously I definitely like the fact that there is never seems to be any bias; all the judges just rank based on their style. When it's a back and forth battle that becomes truly exciting tactically, but possibly with some errors, it seems to be the type of game that Greg Shahade likes the most, rather than the one-sided (perhaps boring games). Arun Sharma seems to like games which are smoothly won but also exciting, with some nice tactics, rather than exciting comebacks from tough positions out of the opening. But all in all, I think it's great that all the Judges are so different and have their own nice points of view as that's what makes the GOTW and GOTY competitions so much more dynamic and fun. That's why a game like Sammour-Hasbun vs Pruess which was voted first unanimously must have been indeed a great game. Anyway, hopefully Week 7 will be more kind to us, and I'm looking forward to our next match. Hopefully I will play and be able to contribute :)