USCL Week 7 Predictions

What’s nice about making these predictions is that I’ve played against most of these players, which means I know their strengths and weaknesses first hand. Hopefully this will make my predictions more accurate!

Boston Blitz 1.5 - New York Knights 2.5

Board 1 Sammour-Hasbun-Nakamura:

My question is what the **** is Jorge doing on board 1??? He’s a very strong player, but clearly not in Hikaru’s league. This is a match up problem for Jorge, since they both are calculating machines except Hikaru does it at a much higher level. Also, Hikaru is far superior in pure technical positions (I found out just how good his technique was when I played him 5-1 time odds at foxwoods). The only possible question mark is Hikaru, will he actually take this game seriously or will he use 2 minutes for the entire game? As long as he doesn’t go crazy, Nakamura should pull through here.

Board 2 Kelleher-Charbonneau:

Kelleher is simply outclassed in this game. Bill is best when he gets an initiative, but this is very hard to do when black against a GM. If he had white this battle might be a little more even, but with black he has virtually no chance. I have to go with my fellow Canadian and predict a Pascal victory.

Board 3: Shmelov-Bonin:

This is a toss up. Denys has white, but Bonin is a little bit stronger (and has just a little more experience). If the Boston Blitz want to draw/win this match, Shmelov is gonna have to come up big in this game. Denys needs to look for a way to create an imbalance early on and try to make the battle very complicated. With such a big edge on boards 1 & 2, Bonin should look to play a solid opening and take very few chances. I’m predicting Bonin will be successful in drawing this game.

Board 4: Williams-Zenyuk:

This game comes down to 3 words– Chris is Awesome!

Other predictions:

Philadelphia Inventors 2.0- New Jersey Knockouts 2.0
Baltimore Kingfishers 2.5 - Queens Pioneers 1.5
Carolina Cobras 3.0 - Tennessee Tempo 1.0
San Francisco Mechanics 2.5 - Miami Sharks 1.5
Seattle Sluggers 1.5 - Dallas Destiny 2.5