Week 5 - Mechanics vs Scorpions

News Flash! Mechanics get stung by swarm of Scorpions!

The past two weeks have been rather bizarre ones for the Arizona Scorpions.
In Week 4 the Scorpions were pitted against the Manhattan Applesauce in a match-up that I was sure Arizona should tie or win. Indeed it looked like it was going to be a tied match when Manhattan had the upper hand after three complete games. 

Arizona needed to win on board 4 where a newcomer to the chess league was playing, Dipro Chakraborty. Dipro worked his way out of a difficult opening eventually gaining the upper hand. With 1 minute 27 seconds on his clock he needed to find one of many 'safe' moves to keep the win alive (Nc5 being the most obvious move). Yet, for some unknown reason, Dipro forfeited on time! This loss handed the Applesauce the match win. The Applesauce, really? It's embarrassing to lose to a team with that kind of tame name. It's like Green Bay losing to the Tallahassee Butterflies!

 After this sour turn of events the Arizona players showed up for Week 5 looking for redemption of some sort. And a redemption is what they got... IN SPADES! 

Board 1 was an interesting battle between Mac Molner against Jessie Kraai. Mac, not understanding endgame concepts all too well went in for an endgame two pawns down. Not the first time we have seen this. Mac, if you're reading this, you want to be UP in material for the endgame, not down in material. Seriously though, Mac had compensation, and this is exactly what you want to do in a Team situation and with the leagues quick time controls. In the end it seemed to confuse Jessie as much as it did Mac and the game petered out to a draw. BUT, at one move  before the players agreed to a draw, Mac missed a chance to win the game after a blunder by Jessie. Both players missed it, and rather than play on and commit more mistakes, they called it a draw.

On board 2 We had Lev Altounian back in the mix for Arizona. He took on Dmitry Zilberstein. I was not able to watch these games live as my father passed away earlier that day, but it seems the players must have both gotten into time pressure, well, at least Dmitry must have. Lev threw out the Dutch defense and after a slight inaccuracy in the opening by Dmitry Lev was able to gain the upper hand. Lev found a unique geometrical formula to gain the win of a pawn in a most unique manner. Eventually Lev was able to create connected passed pawns on the queenside but the play was still complex. After a few very small inaccuracies by Lev the door was open for Dmitry to hold the game, but here's where the time pressure seems to have crept in. Dmitry did not play the R&B ending well at all and this allowed Lev to advance both pawns to the 2nd rank, both ready to promote, this was too much for Dmitry who decided to resign at that point.

Board 3 had Mark Ginsburg in good form in his game against the younger Yian Liou. In a rather innocent looking position Yian made a seemingly obvious move (...Nf5 when ...f5 needed to be played) and after this his game slid downhill rapidly. He still made things tough for Mark, and to be honest, Mark missed a couple of shots to make things easier on himself. As things looked like Yian was going to find a way to hold the game Mark came up with an ingenious idea of giving up a piece, in the endgame (yes, they ALL seem to play this way) but he was able to trap his opponent's bishop on a relatively open board. This also allowed Mark to infiltrate his rook with great effect and this eventually would prove enough to force through the win. While this was not one of the best played games I've seen, the concept that Mark came up with was one of the most entertaining ideas I've ever seen on a chessboard.

One board 4 we have Amanda Mateer goint against Kesav Viswanadha. Amanda played the Sicilian in answer to 1.e4, but her opponent quickly wimped out by playing the c3 line against her. Play was tricky in some parts, Kesav offered the c3 pawn as bait and with a Materialistic Girl like Amanda the fear was she would take it. No! Of course she wouldn't, she kept a nice solid position and improved her pieces. It was a bit funny that she never castled but ended up bringing her KR to d5 via h5 in the early part of the middlegame. Later in the game Amanda had a very nice position but made an outright blunder with ...Kd7, fortunately her opponent missed the winning line and for some reason went full tilt, giving up a rook for some unknown reason. The remainder of the game was really target practice for Amanda, though, I must confess that she missed a few quick mating patterns. Still, when you're cleaning someone's clock, you don't need to look hard for mates. It was a nice game in my opinion and for Kesav to spot Amanda's mistake he needed to see a somewhat backwards move that younger players are prone to miss.

You can watch all the highlights here in this video: