Recap 5: vs. Arizona
After our week 4 loss against the New Jersey Knockouts (which I forgot to blog about, oops!), week 5 brought no excitement or better resuts to our team. The match vs. Arizona ended 2-2, with all 4 draws, which I think is pretty rare in the league! Unfortunately this puts us in an awful position (last place!!!) in the Pacific division of the Western Conference, but I think not all hope is lost since it looks like San Fraincisco is just gonna finish first, and we still have to play against our main rivals: Arizona and Seattle. The second I am done writing this recap, I will, of course, start preparing for my game tomorrow vs. North Carolina. I think it's going to be an important match, as we outrate our opponents on average by about 100 points, and both Arizona and Seattle have tough matches. Now, on to the recap.
-Tatev
This ended up being a quick draw that wasn't exactly inspiring. Melik went for 3. Bb5 vs. the Najdorf, probably trying to avoid a theoretical battle. Mac opted for 3...Nd7, which is known for having more life, unlike 3...Bd7 known for being drawish. The queens came off pretty early, and a draw was agreed soon after, but in the final position I actually prefer Black's position with the pair of bishops.
Altounian - Harmon-Vellotti 1/2
I don't really know anything about this a6-b5 idea that Luke played in the opening, but since he's a kid, I will assume that he knows what he's doing in the opening. I thought Luke was outplaying his opponent for most of the endgame and got a nice edge in the endgame, but wasn't able to do much with it (not that it was easy to do). Even after winning a pawn, White was able to get it back rather quikly, and the doubled b pawns didn't help Black's efforts to win.
I guess following the theme of the day of playing "anti" openings, White opted for the very ambitious Queen's Bishop Attack (thanks to google I now know that such thing exists). White didn't really get anything out of the opening, but opposite side castle positions can often be dangerous, and after several inaccurate moves, Black's king could have been in real trouble if White had played more aggressively. Eventually, White ended up up a piece, but unfortunately Black had just too many pawns.
This game was pretty amsuing, with both sides blundering pawns more or less the same way. First, White blundered the cute 21...Nc5, but Black gave the pawn back to go for an attack on the King side, only to blunder a pawn in return with 28. Ng6. Things cooled down pretty quickly after that.
