Now we all know that New York is a dangerous city filled with villains of all sorts… and if your not careful, you can wander into the wrong neighborhood and get fleeced… robbed… or otherwise hoodwinked…  You need to keep your eyes open and your wits about you at all times… it’s just not safe out there… now is it?   Who knew that New York chess players had been taking lessons in skulduggery?  First Larry gets mugged on move 39 and robbed of a well deserved win… and then Eugene gets his pocket picked and bamboozled into a draw in 137 moves.

Where is the justice?… the police… the defenders of the innocent… the Gotham superheroes… Can no one stop these… these… chess criminals.

The first to go down was Ilya… I suspect an ambush here… and one prepared with malice and forethought.

NM Matt Herman  vs.  NM Ilya Krasik  –  Board 4

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 e6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 a6 5. Nc3 Qc7 6. g3 Bb4 7. Bd2 Nc6 8. a3 Be7
9. Be3 Nf6

The same two players had reached this position before in the 2006 USCL match.  White continued 10.f4 d6 11.Bg2…  and went on to win a thriller.  The difference here is that the following Knight move is prevented.  Ilya must have suspected some preparation.

10. Bg2 Ne5

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Once again the Blitz lose two in a row and have put themselves into a position to break their own “never lost three in a row” streak when they face Baltimore next week.  Not only that, but they have given all the teams below them a huge confidence boost in the race for the 4th and final play-off spot.  Of course, they didn’t necessarily go out of their way to put themselves in that position and actually things should have been different if Boston had reeled in the full point on the top board.

The night started off badly with Ilya Krasik going down in flames to Matthew Herman, falling into a mate in two.  About the only amusing aspect of that game was that fellow NY player, Greg Braylovsky, actually predicted while watching the game on ICC that Krasik would play …Nd8 allowing the mating combination to be played.  I guess it was more wishful thinking on his part at the time but Krasik’s king position was already starting to look like he was on shaky ground, even without the sudden and abrupt end to the game.

After that things went really down hill on board 1 where GM Larry Christiansen was having his way with fellow GM Pascal Charbonneau.  Charbonneau has really handed it to the Blitz on numerous occassions and his curse over the top players for the Blitz (except Jorge Sammour-Hasbun) continued as he miraculously swindled the Blitz All Star after been in a totally losing position.  After the game Charbonneau actually apologized to Christiansen, with his win putting the Knights up 2-0 in the match.

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Boston Blitz vs New York Knights
Monday, October 6, 7:00 pm

The Boston Blitz have the chance to kill off the wounded Knights on Monday night by doing the double over their fierce USCL rivals.  The Knights currently sit at the bottom of the East with a 1-5 record and they are chasing the Blitz (and Carolina) for that final play-off spot.  One more loss and surely they will find the task of making the play-offs this year too much, needing to win all their remaining games while hoping for other teams, such as Boston and Carolina to lose all theirs.  I guess stranger things have happened, the final week of the 2006 regular season for instance, but this would require three such weeks in a row.

While the Blitz always love to put one over the Knights, a much more important reason to get a result is to put last week’s drubbing against Philadelphia clean out of their minds.  It was just one of those weeks were everything went wrong, similar to the previous week against San Francisco when everything went right.  This year the Blitz are having what could be termed as an “average” season with 3 wins and 3 losses on the match front and 12 game points out of a possible 24.  Such a team should not be just “average” though and you can feel the disappointment within the Blitz camp about their season so far, such is the competitive nature of the players on the roster this year.

This week’s match sees the Blitz go with one of their stronger line-ups, using both of their Grandmasters.  GM Larry Christiansen will take the hot seat on board 1 against GM Pascal Charbonneau.  Up until last year’s loss to Jorge Sammour-Hasbun, Charbonneau had been a true thorn in the side of the Blitz, having never lost in any games against the Blitz and having scored some crucial victories at key moments.  However, that loss against Sammour-Hasbun put an end to the “curse” and so Christiansen will be hoping he can keep the momentum going and finally really get the monkey off the team’s back.

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You know what happens when you suffer through a match like this… your eyes tear up… your brain gets all “Squishy” (not the technical chess “Squishy” – for that, see Dave Vigorito’s next book.),  and you start to write poetry (or, at least, words that rhyme)…

Ode to a Dragon Slayer

No stars to cheer this gloom
Where monsters roam
And cannons boom

One battle’s fire in sight
A Dragon’s felled
Our  valiant Knight

Oh Lord,  he shan’t survive
St. George, St. George
Why eight e-five?

Never mind that Vinay Bhat quote…  “Ilya Krasik is the worst fourth board in the league” (or was it “in the history of the league”)   which Matt heartlessly put up on the board… that was no motto… no..  Facts can’t be mottos, can they?… we kid Ilya … a lot.

No…”Oh, fate thou dust mock me” was our motto this night as four brave young men road out to face their doom at the hands of….  The Philadelphia Inventors?? Are you kidding?… a rhetorical question, of course… Only one came back… crawling and bleeding… and mumbling something about a fire breathing monster on board one… and, oh yes, that @#$% Benko.

They found our weakness… give us a pawn and our position gets, for lack of a better term, “Squishy”.

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The 75th Greater Boston Open, organized by the Massachusetts Chess Association (MACA), will take place on October 26, 2008, at the Kennedy Senior Center (MetroWest Chess Club) in Natick.

The tournament will be split into 4 sections, Open, Under 2000, Under 1700 and Under 1400, each of which will be a 4 round Swiss with rounds at 10:00 am, 1:00 pm, 3:15 pm and 5:30 pm.  The time control for all games is G/60 minutes.

The prize fund for the tournament is guaranteed at $1700 and the entry fees are low at just $39 ($45 onsite, please see MACA tournament website for complete details) and there are discounts for unrated players, seniors and additional family members.  Onsite registration is between 8:30 am - 9:30 am.

For more details please contact George Mirijanian at (978) 345-5011 or visit the MACA tournament website.

Check out the Photo Gallery from the week 6 loss to the Philadelphia Inventors.

Oh my!  Did anyone watch the live Boston Blitz TV coverage we had going?  I think it was great for people to be able to watch the action live from the playing room.  How about you?

Ok, so that was my attempt at a “no comment” on the match last night.  The Blitz were crushed by a team they had only dropped half-point to previously in their previous six meetings.  The only bright spot to the evening was Denys Shmelov managing to hold IM Richard Costigan to a draw on board 3, from a position where he was two pawns up.  Thankfully it wasn’t a sweep, something the Blitz has never had to endure in the USCL.

I guess theoretically the other bright spots for the evening were that Queens lost and New Jersey “only” managed to draw but in the end it definitely feels like an opportunity missed and now instead of looking ahead to a week 10 showdown with Queens, we could indeed be looking at a week 9 showdown with this same Philly team who is now only a win back from the Blitz who currently hold the fourth and final play-off spot in the East.

Misery struck first on board 1 with Jorge Sammour-Hasbun losing to GM Sergey Kudrin.  Sammour-Hasbun castled long into Kudrin’s attack but spent a lot of time debating whether to take a sacrificed pawn.  Analysis showed that Sammour-Hasbun was probably ok but he left himself little time to find the correct continuations and the GM kept the pressure up by playing quick moves that were fairly obvious, at least for him.  Eventually the pressure told and Sammour-Hasbun had to give up material, leaving him with two rooks against a queen and bishop.  He tried a couple of last minute tricks but the GM easily negotiated them and was about to deliver checkmate when Sammour-Hasbun resigned.

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Boston Blitz vs Philadelphia Inventors
Wednesday, October 1, 7:30 pm

Phew!  All appears to be right again with the world as the Blitz calmly handled the pressure of last week’s game against San Francisco, ranked one of the best teams in the league, to get back to winning ways and put themselves in good standing for the home stretch of the regular season.

The Blitz currently sit in third place in the Eastern Division, behind Queens and New Jersey, but are two wins to the good in the hunt for the play-off spots with Baltimore, Philadelphia and our special friends from New York all propping up the division with just one win.  With just five weeks of the regular season to go that is a nice cushion to have.

This week sees the Blitz face one of those “lower” teams, the Philadelphia Inventors.  After having now sufficiently got over their identity crisis (being called the Masterminds in their first two seasons) it appears the luck that their new name brought them last year, when they finished in second place in the East, has finally run out and it’s now a case of new name, same game, winning just one game this year against fellow basement dwellers, Baltimore.

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GM Christiansen came in early and angry this night… one could see it in his eyes.  Obviously, Josh Freidel’s prediction of a San Fran win, 3.5 - 0.5 had him upset.  Oh yes, I know his blog said Boston 3.5 – 2.0, but we all could read between the lines… the code was simple,  taken directly from the ancient Biblical code matrices.  Did he really think we wouldn’t catch on to this?  Just eliminate every other word, beginning with a vowel, take the third letter, or second letter, depending on the time of the post…  (yeah, they had internet access in those days, although response times were horrendous)… and when you put it all together you get “Boston #$%$, we win easily, 3.5 – 0.5”.

Having deciphered the insult, I can only say that it’s psychological effect was no less devastating.  Marc Esserman came in complaining of a tennis injury to his knee… obviously setting up an excuse should he lose. Ilya, as always, complained of tiredness… well, it would help if you didn’t stay out all night… and Jorge complained of… oh, never mind, I try to keep this article PG… beyond that, I had a headache, aggravated by having to relay moves in Jorge’s game.

Larry never complained though… he simply took out his anger on his opponent, who did his own complaining… seems his finger was hurting… those keyboard injuries can be tough.

Oh, we all need excuses to explain to our inner selves why we are not as good as Fischer… that is to say, you guys aren’t… Please, can we stop complaining… I can’t take any more… this headache is killing me.

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Jorge Sammour-Hasbun won the US Chess League’s Game of the Week for the second time this season thanks to his creative attacking victory against IM David Pruess of the San Francisco Mechanics.

The decision was totally unanimous and the USCL judges provided the following comments:

Greg Shahade: This week wasn’t a close decision, great game by Jorge, and flashy as well. 31. Nxe6 was a nice shot. I suspect that the judges will win the poll comfortably this week…

Arun Sharma: Though I had trouble finding five games I thought were super deserving of being my Top Five this week, first place was definitely not an issue this time. This year I feel the amount of games which have been both exciting and quite high quality has been very low, and this game definitely fit the bill for me in both regards. As he often does, in a fairly tame position Sammour-Hasbun found a very nice tactic with 31. Nxe6!, neatly crashing through Black’s position after which the g-pawn, who’s advance hadn’t seemed to accomplish much, quickly became deadly. (1st Place: 5 points)

Jonathan Hilton: Sammour-Hasbun showed tremendous foresight (or perhaps simply attacking intuition) when he played the move that launched a thousand ships — 12. Nb5!!? This move could easily be seen as a waste of time; sure, White can penetrate d6, but there is no way for the Knight to stay there. Yet on move 15, Sammour laid everything on the line with 15. f5!!?, sacrificing two pawns for what I believed at first to be a less-than-impressive attack. By move 25, ten moves later, it was unclear what White had accomplished. He’d sunk the g6 pawn into Black’s position, but all of his positional pressure came at the price of two pawns.

Yet White slowly developed his pieces, organizing, coordinating — until suddenly, it became clear Black could do nothing to stop White’s inevitable breakthrough. Perhaps Pruess had some chance to activate, to break up the position with an …e5 strike, but if so, he didn’t take it. 31. Nxe6!!, and White was winning. (1st place: 5 points)