Alright everyone, 3 of the first 5 games of the 1st Round of Group B of the SPICE Cup have been completed. In this group, there are 10 players with an average rating of 2485. It is a single Round Robin event and here is the lineup:(from the official website)

GM Davorin Kuljasevic (2555 - Croatia) Texas Tech Knight Raiders
GM Ben Finegold (2534 - USA) 2009 SPICE Cup B group co-champion
IM Gegerly Antal (2526 - HUN) Texas Tech Knight Raiders
GM Andre Diamant (2498 - Brazil) Texas Tech Knight Raiders
GM Anatoly Bykhovsky (2497 - Israel) Texas Tech Knight Raiders
IM Irina Krush (2490 - USA) 2010 U.S. Women's Champion
IM Bryan Smith (2478 - USA)
IM Dean Ippolito (2469 - USA)
IM Danny Rensch (2404 - USA)
FM Darwin Yang (2402 - USA) One of the most talented young players in the U.S.

    Group B uses traditional scoring: 1 point for a win  1/2 point for a draw and 0 pts for a loss

   Here are the 3 games:

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    The remaining two games will be posted upon their completion, then I'm going to rest from all of this reporting LOL 

   -Mark

wooo... danny may have been drunk or something

   The other two games have been finished for a while but no PGN has been put up yet but here are the results of those two games:

Krush 1/2-1/2 Smith

Yang 0-1 Antal

   I'm heading offline for the night so I will post the PGNs in the morning when I do Round 9 of Nanjing.   'Nite all!

   -Mark

danny!!! i told you dean would play the caro-kann! i suspected it was coming and i'm sure danny did too..

to my amateur eyes white has a good position for 16 moves, small advantage to white i think though nothing special and a draw would be normal because dean doesn't lose such positions. or maybe he does... i don't know what i'm talking about.

but then danny decides to go insane. dropping a pawn and then the rook trapped like THAT is incredible for an IM.  it's a bummer since danny knows some really awesome chess. o well.  stay cool.    dean specializes in long slow grinds so this is like a miniature.

i'm a fan of both of those players as i've had the pleasure of getting to know them and their chess a bit, and i really like smith's brand of chess too. tight group in terms of playing strength.

[edit: thanks for posting the games mark!!!]