The Boston Blitz are through to the 2008 USCL Championship Match after beating the Carolina Cobras 2½-1½.  They will meet the Dallas Destiny in a rematch of the 2007 USCL Championship after they beat the Miami Sharks by 3-1.  Congratulations to the Boston Blitz!

For a complete match report see Mark LaRocca’s article titled “Somebody up there likes Boston.”

Boston Blitz vs Carolina Cobras
Wednesday, November 19, 7:00 pm

The Carolina Cobras are undoubtedly the most surprising team in this year’s USCL.  Having being predicted by most to finish at the bottom of a very competitive Eastern Division, the Cobras turned everything upside down to finish as Champions, gaining draw odds throughout the play-offs.  Despite this, not many gave them a chance against a resurgent New York team in the quarter-finals, although once again they defied the odds and justified their 1st place finish with a resounding 3½-½ pounding of the Knights.

It appears the USCL pundits are at last warming up to Carolina as at least one of them has predicted their semi-final with the Blitz will end in a tie, which obviously would see the Cobras through to the final given that they have draw odds.  This is definitely a case of showing a little more respect, but not much more, to the Eastern Division Champions, a team unbeaten since week 3 that just demolished one of the pre-season favorites.

However, given that the Blitz overcame draw odds in their quarter-final against Queens last week, inflicted one of only two losses during the season (week 2) on the Cobras and have yet to tie a match in eleven attempts this year you can see why it is a close call.  Maybe it’s not so much of a lack of respect for the Cobras but a showing of some respect to the Blitz who have won their last 4 games and are on a roll.  I definitely don’t envy anyone trying to predict this match result!

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The Blitz won an exciting match against the Carolina Cobras by a score of 3-1.  The heroes of the night were the new guys playing on boards 3 and 4, Charles Riordan and Marc Esserman. Charles’ game in particular was exciting with his multiple sacrifices, a piece for two pawns, then a pawn and finally a nice return of material to finish off the game in style. However, the overall result was up in the air until probably the end of board 2 when Denys managed to unravel a particularly ugly position.

The first game of the night to finish was board 1, even though it was the game that went the most moves.  GM Larry Christiansen was held to a draw by IM Lev Milman and credit to Milman for making it look fairly effortless to score a surprising half-point against the Blitz All-Star.  I don’t think Larry was quite feeling himself after having his computer burn up on him at the start of the Chess FM broadcast of the Bilbao Super Tournament that is currently in progress.

On board 2, Denys Shmelov managed to dig himself out of a positional bind to score a well deserved draw against FM Oleg Zaikov. At one stage his position looked miserable and his pieces were running out of moves. Maybe analysis will show that Zaikov let Denys off the hook but once this game was eventually drawn, the whole room gave a huge sigh of relief as we had already drawn on board 1 and the consensus was that we were winning from an early stage on board 4.

Charles Riordan made his 2008 Blitz debut on board 3 against FM Ron Simpson. Simpson was simp(son)ly outplayed by Charles in a typical King’s Indian. Charles broke through with a piece sacrifice on the black pawn chain (18.Nxd6) and followed it up with a great plan… f4, followed by e5, giving him a crushing pawn mass in the center of the board. A time scramble ensued but the final nail in the coffin was the return of the exchange (39.Rxg7) simplifying the position, making this game one to look for in the Game of the Week voting. An all around nice victory by Charles and even better was the fact it put the Blitz 2-1 up with board 4 cruising to victory.

The last game of the night to finish, which could easily have been the first, was Marc Esserman’s fight with Craig Jones. Jones sacrificed a piece for two pawns on b5, typical for white in these types of lines. His problem however was that his pieces were not quite ready for the attack and they were forced to retreat just a mere few moves later, leaving Marc with a winning advantage. Eventually Marc was able to get all his pieces into play and, avoiding any little tricks that Jones had in store for him, he managed to convert his advantage to eventually give the Blitz a 3-1 victory.