Boston Blitz advances to the Finals, Match Wrap up

I need to stop predicting outcomes of USCL matches, I can never seem to get it right! Boston Blitz dismantled the New York Knights last night, and what I thought would be the most important board turned out not to matter at all! Larry Christiansen was able to hold Hikaru Nakamura to a draw on board 1, or maybe it was the other way around. Hikaru came on ICC later and said he didn’t want to “waste” his 1. d4 prep on a USCL match, LOL… Smallville needs a crash course in public relations, atleast make it look like you care!! It’s too bad Hikaru didn’t take the USCL seriously this year, if he did I’m sure he could have done a lot better.

The Board 2 match of Jorge Sammour-Hasbun and GM Pascal Charbonneau seemed to be a back and forth battle.. Jorge sacrificed a pawn for some nice activity but Charbonneau seemed to neutralize the activity by giving the pawn back. Things seemed to look fine for Charbonneau after he castled by hand, but then he played Qg5?? which just lost immediately. Major props to Jorge for an insane record on board 2 so far. At the start of the season, I honestly didn’t think he’d do as well as he did, since he hasn’t played serious chess for many years. But now it’s pretty clear he is a force to be reckon with in New England.

On board 3, IM Jay Bonin somehow managed to outplay Denys Shemlov in an endgame that seemed to be very favourable for Shmelov. Shmelov had a rook and 2 pawns vs Bonin’s bishop+knight, but all of Bonin’s pawns seemed very loose. I kibitzed at the start of this endgame that there is “no way Shmelov can lose this”, Wrong again! Bonin showed that he is a true fighter and went on to win. Thankfully for the Boston Blitz, the match result was already decided at this point.

Board 4 was a very strange affair. ChrissyBear played some strange moves in the opening (Bd2? for instance) and Zenyuk seemed to reach a better position with the black pieces. Then Iryna missed this f2-f4 move which wins a piece, but if she had played h5! instead of Qd7?, she seems to get very good compensation for the piece. After that Chrissy was just up too much material, and drove the nail in the New York Knight’s coffin. I wasn’t especially impressed with Chrissy’s technique after winning the piece, but I think he was a little nervous and wanted to make sure he didn’t mess it up.. Congrats to Da Bear, revenge is SWEEEEET!