The Boston Blitz started of their 2008 campaign with a 3-1 trouncing of arch rivals, New York Knights.  Wins from Jorge Sammour-Hasbun on board 1 and Ilya Krasik on board 4 were the highlights of an exciting quartet of games.

Going into the match New York’s top player for this year, GM Alex Shabalov, had been doing some serious trash talking by stating that he could beat the entire Blitz team in a simul and that he was 20-0 against Sammour-Hasbun.  Thanks to this, the Blitz management team certainly didn’t have to give any type of pep talk before and you could feel that the players were pumped up for this one.

Board 1 followed a line from a recent Topalov-Kramnik game that involved a piece sacrifice as early as move 11 and, with Shabalov’s novelty on move 16, the fight began.  A very tactically rich and complicated position arose, the type that both Shabalov and Sammour-Hasbun excel in.  In fact Sammour-Hasbun deliberately tries to steer his games into these melees, even if at the cost of it not been theoretically the best continuation.

Shabalov ended up with a great attack but Sammour-Hasbun cooly defended the position and eventually obtained some much needed counter play.  When the dust settled, Sammour-Hasbun was a piece to the good and it was a matter of technique in finishing off his Grandmaster opponent.  Eat your words Shaba!

Down on board 4 Ilya Krasik was the first Blitz player of the night to finish and he did it in style.  His opponent, Evan Rosenberg, possibly overlooked a neat tactic (Bc8) which clearly leads to a winning position.  Despite Rosenberg’s best efforts to complicate the position, Krasik calmly consolidated his king position and Rosenberg ran out of time in a hopeless position.

One of last year’s All-Stars, Denys Shmelov, was the next to finish as he finished up having to take a draw against his IM opponent, Jay Bonin, on board 3.  Shmelov and Bonin played each other three times last year and their records remained at an even split after the match.  Bonin played the opening quietly and obtained a slight edge.  Shmelov decided to sacrifice a pawn to open up the play but Bonin defended and, when given the first opportunity, was quick to trade off queens into a drawn ending rather than try to win by holding the extra pawn, a decision that mystified most people watching given the match situation.  Having turned down an earlier draw offer, there was nothing Shmelov could do to prevent the inevitable as Bonin traded off as many pieces as possible leaving the position totally lifeless.

IM Dave Vigorito made his Blitz debut and had a hard fought, complicated draw, against Gregory Braylovsky.  Braylovsky sacrificed a pawn for some active piece play in the middle game leaving Vigorito’s pieces on awkward squares.  However, it is not clear how Braylovsky could have made use of his better piece placement.  After some careful manouvering, Vigorito managed to turn the tables and put Braylovsky on the back foot.  In the end a draw was agreed with each player having about 2 minutes remaining on their clocks.  The final position needs some analysis but Vigorito was happy to accept a draw as he had noted that Sammour-Hasbun was winning and this left the Blitz 2-1 up, needing just a draw in the final game to clinch the match.

This fantastic win puts the Blitz in a great position as defending Eastern Division Champions and will send shockwaves around the league after nobody gave the Blitz much of a chance given the absence of their GMs.  A truly magnificent and satisfying result.

Look out for Mark LaRocca’s Beat Reporter post that should be up in a couple of days and an entertaining interview with some of the Blitz players after the game.  A photo gallery from the event is already posted.