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New England Masters in Full Swing
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New England Masters in Full Swing |
By Jennifer Shahade/Betsy Dynako | |
August 13, 2008 | |
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GM Timur Gareev, Photo Betsy Dynako
After four rounds of the New England Masters (Pawtucket, Rhode Island, August 11-15) , GM Timur Gareev leads with 4/4. At 3.5/4 are GMs Keith Arkell and Sergey Erenburg. Defending champion Leonid Kritz ceded two draws, to Justin Sarkar and Marc Esserman. Timur captured the sole lead with an attacking win against Jorge Sammour-Hasbun of Dos Hermanas fame. Sammour-Hasbun surely regretted castling queenside after Timur's clean and brutal attack. Sammour had to resign in the final position in view of the unstoppable threat, a2+ Ka1 Qc1 mating. 2271 Despite the disappointment for the strongest untitled player we can think of, Jorge can be proud of two swashbuckling wins of his own so far in the NE Masters: 2269 2267 ![]()
Jorge Sammour-Hasbun
Blunders and Brilliancies 44 players came out to New England to fight, which has resulted in a number of brilliancies, and of course the occasional time trouble blunder. Here is a selection. With just a few seconds on his clock and a couple moves from time control, Hungaski played Nh7 in the following position. How did Esserman win instantly? ![]()
How does White win instantly after Nh7?
Usually, journalists enthuasiastically print the games of young players defeating older masters, and CLO is no exception. In the NE Masters, there are a couple notable exceptions with the older player prevailing in each of the following cases. Braden Bournival's win over Canadian junior Eric Hansen (who also blogged on the official website ) was cool because usually it's a bad sign for White in the Tarrasch if he ends up with a pawn on e5, but in this case, there was tactical justification: 2266 How did Paul MacIntrye finish off Stanford freshman Elliot Liu in the following position? ![]()
Position after 28.Kh2
Our last example is admittedly frail on the age differential as the winner is just a year older than his opponent. But the winning move is unusual. How did Canadian junior Dan Kazmaier, playing White, win against Brandeis student Max Enkin? ![]()
Position after 24...f5,
White to Move and Win For more on Enkin and New England Masters history, check out the Boston Globe article on the 07 event. Enjoy the following photo gallery and be sure to follow the games live on the official website or the Internet Chess Club. Photo Gallery by Betsy Dynako ![]()
Alisa Melekhina
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Jorge Sammour-Hasbun, Chris Bird and David Harris outside the tournament site
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Raja Panjwani and David Vigorito face off
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Defending champion, GM Leonid Kritz
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A crowd for the Sergey Erenburg-Justin Sarkar game, which Erenburg won
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Max Enkin
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