Before round four, I believe we all went back to the house to relax. I took a nap and some people played some basketball. When we arrived back at the hotel we had little time before our next game. We looked at the pairings and we were up against another tough team consisting of four pretty young kids. Daniel was paired against a 2150 rated 15 year old, and I was paired against a 2012 rated player.
My game was over the quickest. I played the KIA, played very tough, but he played better, and was able to quell my attack (I tried to swindle him, and after the match he confessed that he almost fell for it), and once he did that he got the initiative. I fought on, eventually accepting a piece sacrifice, and refusing to give the material back to avoid a mate (because, I did not see the mate), and resigned facing imminent mate. A very interesting thing happened after the game. Not only did my opponent know the KIA, but he had prepared against it because it had defeated him so many times. First time I had run into that situation. In spite of his preparation, I had chances and I felt that I played one of my better games of the tournament up to this point. (Which wasn't that hard to do)
My game was the least interesting of the four.
Adonis came up with a crazy sacrifice in his game that didn't work, although it was close, and was left with a queen and some extra pawns versus 2 rooks and a bishop. He fought long and hard, but eventually when his 2 central passers fell, he resigned.
Kevin was two pawns down in a rook and pawn ending and drew his game. What an instructive endgame he played, because at some point he could have regained a pawn, reducing the scope of his rook, but he left the material out there, and used his rook's activity to maintain threats which eventually ensured the draw. For those of you who know Clyde, it is my opinion that Clyde would be proud of this endgame.
And the final game in our group had to be the most interesting. Dan got into mutual time trouble with his opponent, and it looked like his opponent had all of the attacking chances. But Dan's dragon bishop held back defensively the entire game, and even though his opponent had 3 majors bearing down on Dan's king, nothing ever came of the attack. And with seconds to spare they both made time control and Dan prevailed!
Wow! What a match. We lost, but we were supposed to lose. And two of our teammates had played heroically. I was the only one who was truly lost before move 30. We probably were not going to win the U1800 section with 2 losses, unless we won on tiebreaks, but we still had some serious fighting to do. Stay tuned for my chance to make good on an earlier promise, and stay tuned to hear what I won!
