The Boston Blitz managed to beat the Western Division leading San Francisco Mechanics, scoring a 3-1 victory.  In fact at the end, the scoreline probably flattered the Mechanics as it could well have been 4-0, with the Blitz seemingly just having one of those nights.

The first game of the night to finish was up on board 1.  Blitz GM Larry Christiansen probably had the toughest fight on his hands but his opponent, GM Elect Vinay Bhat, inexplicably overstepped the time limit.  The final position was unclear, at least to me, with Christiansen’s rook very active but his knight looking worse than his opponent’s bishop.  There was still a lot to play for but Bhat explained that while trying to type f4, he somehow managed to type f5, not once but twice, and was flagged.

Board 3 was next to finish and with it came another half-point, this time courtesy of Marc Esserman.  Esserman was probably a slight underdog going in, playing the very talented and up and coming FM Sam Shankland and also having the black pieces.  However, ratings apparently don’t take into account the effort that is made before the game and it looked like he just out-prepared Shankland from the start.  After a dubious pawn sacrifice it was Shankland who had to go on the defensive and his position looked very bad with his pawns on a2, b3 and c2 allowing the black dark-squared bishop on f6 to point ominously at an open king.  Unfortunately for Esserman he made a team decision by placing his queen on e5 rather than on c5, preferring what to him was the safer option rather than complications given that we looked good on other boards.  It definitely worked as the game quickly fizzled out to a draw but it could have been so much more.

The next game to finish was a sacrificial slugfest on board 4 between Ilya Krasik and FM Daniel Naroditsky.  Once again the Blitz player totally out-prepared his opponent and by about move 17 he had used about 5 minutes compared to about 40 for his opponent.  Naroditsky played a speculative sacrifice that forced Krasik to defend accurately, which he did very impressively.  Unfortunately for Krasik, and the Blitz, he let his clock run down and, just as he was a whole rook up, he managed to walk straight into a perpetual check, which the young Mechanics player snapped up in a heart beat.

In the final game of the night to finish, the Blitz’s All-Star from 2007, Jorge Sammour-Hasbun, managed to play a very elegant game on board 2 against IM David Pruess.  Sammour-Hasbun’s kingside attack was mounted but the pawns became fixed and so he had to find another way in.  This he did with some patient manouvering while Pruess did nothing but posture his own queenside attack, which never got anywhere.  An eventual piece sacrifice, 31.Nxe6, opened the floodgates to Pruess’ king and the major piece battering ram that had been so carefully constructed on the e-file was too much to handle for the IM.  Yet another attacking masterpiece from Sammour-Hasbun and undoubtedly another candidate for Game of the Week, which he has already won once this year.