| Board | White | Result | Black |
| 1. | Jorge Sammour-Hasbun (2603) | 1-0 | GM Sergey Kudrin (2602) |
| 2. | IM Bryan Smith (2528) | ½-½ | Denys Shmelov (2474) |
| 3. | Marc Esserman (2461) | 1-0 | FM Thomas Bartell (2411) |
| 4. | Kaviyanan Sivakumar (2048) | 0-1 | Vadim Martirosov (2235) |
| Boston Blitz | 3½-½ | Philadelphia Inventors | |
Boston Blitz 3½-½ Philadelphia Inventors
September 23rd, 2009 
Chris Bird 
Posted in 
The Legends of the West
September 21st, 2009 Mark La Rocca Well, it’s time to bite the bullet, so to speak. The match was billed as a sort of showdown at the O.K. Corral and… I guess it kinda turned out that way… The Earp brothers showed up and mercilessly gunned down the people’s favorite Clanton’s. Too bad Boston was on the wrong end of the barrel this time. Come to think of it, weren’t the Clantons and McLaurys braggen on how they was gonna put an end to those Yankees. Hmmm… but that would mean the Earps were from the north, and the Clantons from the south and… I think we got it backwards somehow.
As it turned out, the Dallas Mavericks rode into to town… guns a blazin’… and shot the sheriff and his buddies before they could even pick up a weapon. At least, the aforementioned gunfight left the Earps wounded. Strangely, Boston’s proven championship caliber team went down with a thud in a battle that is the stuff of which legends are made.
Now, hand me that there shovel… I gotsta bury me some bodies… the first being everyone’s favorite 4th board. Deputy Ilya Krasik…
The Wayback Machine
September 17th, 2009 Mark La Rocca Ok, so week three was a bust… No, I am not going to skip annotating it; but, since I was on vacation in week two… and, therefore, missed Boston’s 3.5-0.5 win over the Carolina Cobras… and since a most amazing and beautiful game was played on third board… I just thought I’d cheer myself up with a quick and dirty presentation of a throwback game if ever there was one.
Now, most of you youngsters don’t know what the Wayback machine is… It’s a cartoon invention belonging to Mr. Peabody (a dog) and his boy Sherman (a boy) and was a regular feature in the Rocky and Bullwinkle series. In it, Mr. Peabody took Sherman “way back” in time to teach him history and general life lessons. Of course, Dogs don’t really talk and such machines don’t really exist… do they? Well, I don’t know… maybe. You be the judge as Marc Esserman takes us Way, Way Back… to the romantic chess days of yore, back to the era of Anderson and Morphy, and gives Mr. Simpson and us all a lesson in chess history and how to punish your opponent with a flair.
SM Marc Esserman (BOS) – FM Ron Simpson (CAR)
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.0–0 b5
Usually just a transposing move into one of the main lines after the Bishop retreats and Black plays …Be7. Just another boring Spanish game. Considering the course of this game, maybe now was the time for Black to play the Open Ruy with [5...Nxe4 6.Re1 Nc5 7.Bxc6 dxc6 8.Nxe5 Be7] Was this his intent and he just accidentally drove the Bishop first? Only FM Simpson knows.
6.Bb3 Nxe4?!
|  |
Position after 6… Nxe4?!
A dangerous (for Black), but playable move, which hands White a strong advantage.
Boston Blitz 0-4 Dallas Destiny
September 15th, 2009 Chris Bird | Board | White | Result | Black |
| 1. | IM Jacek Stopa (2565) | 1-0 | GM Larry Christiansen (2662) |
| 2. | Jorge Sammour-Hasbun (2603) | 0-1 | IM Daniel Ludwig (2543) |
| 3. | FM Keaton Kiewra (2365) | 1-0 | Vadim Martirosov (2235) |
| 4. | Ilya Krasik (2252) | 0-1 | FM Darwin Yang (2348) |
| Boston Blitz | 0-4 | Dallas Destiny | |
2009 week three preview: 2008 Finals rematch
September 14th, 2009 Matt Phelps So every USCL blog seems to be doing predictions on how their team will fare in the next match; I predict a 4-0 win for the Blitz in week three. Here’s how it will go down:
Board 1: IM Jacek Stopa – GM Larry Christiansen
Stopa seems to play anything as white and Larry can (and does) play anything with either color, so the opening is anybody’s guess. The game will meander for a while into an endgame with a few pieces left, which Larry will then use to whip up a mating attack, forcing regicide on the e5 square. Game of the week.
Board 2: Jorge Sammour-Hasbun – IM Daniel Ludwig
This will be a Slav or Najdorf, depending on which move Philip (our TD and usual board 2 relayer) randomly plays for Jorge on move 1. Either way, it will be incomprehensible for us mortals for 25-30 moves, which we will all learn later was “all theory.” Jorge wins after the first out-of-book move by Ludwig (I predict it will be 31… f6) is a lemon.
Board 3: FM Keaton Kiewra – NM Vadim Martirosov
Vadim is underrated, but hasn’t played a tournament game in a while. Although, he is constantly analyzing games whenever I see him. Also, he explained to me how the move a4 attacks the d5 square in the Lopez, and I understood it. This will be a smooth, elegant victory as black that may even be fathomed by me.
Board 4: NM Ilya Krasik – FM Darwin Yang
Anything can, and will, happen. Krasik wins in a way that he, and only he, understands. The prevailing opinion will be that he is losing the whole game, until he wins finding a weird tactic that everyone will say, “Krasik will never see that move.”
After the match the team will go to Charlie’s in the square and get that mean waitress upstairs who will be annoyed by our boisterousness, just like the rest of the League.
There you have it; 4-0 Boston.
-Matt
Boston Blitz 3½-½ Carolina Cobras
September 10th, 2009 Chris Bird | Board | White | Result | Black |
| 1. | GM Eugene Perelshteyn (2588) | 1-0 | IM Jonathan Schroer (2429) |
| 2. | FM Oleg Zaikov (2388) | ½-½ | Denys Shmelov (2474) |
| 3. | Marc Esserman (2461) | 1-0 | FM Ron Simpson (2290) |
| 4. | Craig Jones (2275) | 0-1 | Ilya Krasik (2252) |
| Boston Blitz | 3½-½ | Carolina Cobras |
Video Action from the Blitz vs Queens Pioneers
September 5th, 2009 Chris Bird Here is some video action from the Boston Blitz vs Queens Pioneers, week 1 of the 2009 US Chess League season. Included in the video is the reaction at the end of the match when GM Alex Stripunsky blundered his queen via a mouse slip. There is also an interview with new Boston Blitz Manager, Jorge Sammour-Hasbun.
Eeeeck!! A Mouse!
September 4th, 2009 Mark La Rocca Can it be? Is it really the beginning of another season? I guess when you get to my age, tempus fugit, space warps, and obviously won games are incredibly lost. My sympathies to Queens and GM Stripunsky and, most of all, to the relayer, who, I assume, was most unceremoniously beaten with fine strips of bamboo.
Oh, the horror of having lost your team’s draw on a relayer’s mouse slip; well at least that’s the story we got. But, more on that later.
It was a match of sorrow and elation as the Boston Blitz met the Queens Pioneers, that other New York team, on a night of the Good… the Bad… and the Ugly! Looking at things from the Boston perspective, let’s start with the first game to finish… and my candidate for “the Ugly” part of the evening.
Boston Blitz 3-1 Queens Pioneers
September 1st, 2009 Chris Bird | Board | White | Result | Black |
| 1. | GM Alex Stripunsky (2628) | 0-1 | GM Larry Christiansen (2662) |
| 2. | GM Eugene Perelshteyn (2588) | 1-0 | IM Eli Vovsha (2539) |
| 3. | FM Andrei Zaremba (2398) | 1-0 | Marc Esserman (2461) |
| 4. | Andrew Wang (2136) | 1-0 | Shaun Smith (2038) |
| Boston Blitz | 3-1 | Queens Pioneers |
The Boston Blitz enjoyed a successful, albeit very fortuitous, start to the 2009 USCL season thanks to a 3-1 victory over the Queens Pioneers.
With the match hanging in the balance at 2-1 to the Blitz, the top board game between the Blitz’s GM Larry Christiansen and Queens’ GM Alex Stripunsky looked like it was going to complete a clean sweep for the players with the white pieces and finish the match in a 2-2 tie. However, with both players having just a couple of minutes remaining, Stripunsky accidentally placed his queen on the a8 square, instead of the clearly winning b8 square. Christiansen immediately went to pick up his knight on c7, which he had intended to place on e8 as a pre-calculated response to meet the queen check on b8. However, noticing that something wasn’t quite right, he hesitated, thought for a few seconds and instead of blocking the check, he used the same knight to now capture the en prise queen, much to the delight and cheer of his teammates and the gathered spectators at the Blitz site.
After confirming with the league that the move made on the board was going to stand, Stripunsky had nothing better than to resign the game, changing what looked like a certain tie into a victory for the Blitz.
Blitz vs Queens, 2009 Week 1
August 31st, 2009 Chris Bird Boston Blitz vs Queens Pioneers
7:00 pm, Monday, August 31, 2009
Woohoo!
The 2009 season starts tonight and the Blitz kick off the road to the 2009 US Chess League Championship with a match-up against that other team from New York, the Queens Pioneers.
The Pioneers will be immediately looking for revenge as the Blitz were the team responsible for knocking them out in the first round of the play-offs last year, although to put it bluntly, the two teams only met in the first round thanks to Queens’ horrendous collapse at the end of the regular season, which saw them drop into 2nd place when they should have easily finished at the top.
Admittedly, the loss in the quarter-final was also probably helped by the fact that they decided not to play their player of the year, IM (GM elect) Alex Lenderman, and his subsequent critical outburst has seen him defect over to Philadelphia where he will be player/coach/manager.
To compensate for that loss, they have in return managed to poach Carolina’s top board IM (GM elect) Lev Milman (actually he finished up his studies at Duke and moved to NY but it didn’t sound as good). Milman will be used predominantly on board 2 and this should help him tremendously as he will no longer have the continued underdog tag that he had week in and week out on the top board in Carolina.
Queens also have added league blogger, WFM Elizabeth (Liz) Vicary, to their roster although she is jet setting around the globe and will miss the first week. No doubt Queens will probably win the blogger of the year contest this year…
