Untitled Tuesday and Saturday recaps - July 3rd and 7th

The July report was written by @SmyslovFan.

Scacchista89 wins the highly competitive July Untitled Tuesday!

The July 2018 (yeah, this report is so late, I thought it a good idea to add which year this happened!) event featured some of the highest rated players this tournament has seen so far. As usual, the early rounds featured some big upsets, but this time, the highest rated players generally stayed at the front of the pack for most of the tournament.

This month, we will be trying an experiment. We will publish a separate "puzzle" section based on this month's games. 

Without further ado, here are the games from the Tuesday event.

 Round 4 match up between eventual first and second: 

 Round 5 saw EveryFishKnows relinquish sole first place after reaching a dead even (tho not dead drawn) endgame. asg2 once again showed his formidable endgame technique in this game!

After five rounds, @asg2 was the only player with a perfect score.

Here's another Round 5 game. Cow demonstrates that any opening even 1...Na6, can be lethal in blitz!

Cow24 was up to fifth place after this round.

Round 5 also saw some tragic-comedies. The following game that was truly fascinating until Black had a mouse slip. Who was better though?

After five rounds, the leaderboard looked like this:

In Round 6, our Sodium Attack hero (Na3/Na6) ran into some trouble. Black got an excellent position where it was difficult for White to come up with sensible moves. Black wasn't winning from a computer's perspective, but from a human perspective White had a very difficult position. 

White managed to fight back and even managed to reach a comfortable endgame, but then disaster struck. 

 @Scacchista managed to defeat @asg2 in a game featured in this month's puzzle section, while @EveryFishKnows could only draw against @bariloche1

After seven rounds, the tournament was shaping up to be a three-player race, with @asg2 and @scacchista in first  with 6 points while @Everyfishknows was only half a point behind. Lurking a point behind in fourth place, and still with a chance to pull an upset, was @2007chess. The peloton was out of it with 4.5/7. There wasn't going to be a sprint finish this time.

In round 8, @Scacchista defeated @2007chess with a beautiful finish again which can be seen in the puzzle section. @asg2 kept pace with a mating attack of his own against @Carpe_Noctum. @EveryFishKnows also when after I blundered out of the opening and resigned on move 18. The blunder can be found in the puzzle section. 

The penultimate round proved to be decisive for the tournament. 

 This round 9 game between cow24 and Scacchista on board one was fascinating. White was winning, then made a faulty sacrifice and paid dearly. Scacchista had both hands on the first place trophy after this game.

 Meanwhile, @Kstorn pulled a 300 point upset over @asg2!

After nine rounds, @scacchista89 was in clear first, @EveryFishknows was half a point behind, and @asg2 had drifted into third place.

In round ten, @scacchista89 won without drama, @EveryFishknows drew against @kstorn in a game with few chances for either side, and @asg2 lost a second time in a row, this time to @ericbowereid after trapping his own Q. The finish to that game can be found in the puzzle section. 

@Scacchista won an extremely competitive July tournament with 9 out of 10 points. @EveryFishKnows finished half a point behind, in second place. @asg2, who had been tied for first two rounds earlier, shared third place a full two points behind with @ericbowiereid and @kstorn, who both managed to beat players rated +2200 to earn joint third.

This was one of the most sharply contested Untitled Tuesday events we've seen!

July's Saturday Tournament Ends in a Tie! 

The July Untitled Saturday event was sparsely attended, due in part to the unfortunate timing of the event, just after the England-Croatia World Cup Semi-final. As a result, the event which normally lasts ten rounds only had seven rounds played. Despite its low attendance, with only 11 players completing the event, the tournament saw three players finish with 6 out of 7 points. The tie-breaks could not differentiate between two, so we had an official tie for the first time! Each of the top three players lost one game, to each other. And each defeated all of their other competitors. 

@SpeedyChess11(1931), @cow24(2155), tied for first, and @MrDodgy(2233) earned third place due to the tie-breaks. 

Here are the highlights of the tournament. Be sure to check out the puzzle section for some of the other games!

 @Cow24 started off the tournament with a pretty win in round one. 

Round 2 saw the first of three decisive games between the eventual winners:

In round three, @SpeedyChess11 faced the second seed, but fell victim to @cow24's Sodium Attack.

In round 4, I had a chance to score one for Truth and Beauty against @Cow24's nefarious Sodium attack, but failed after he outplayed me when I overestimated my chances. 

Meanwhile, @MrDodgy played a beautiful game against @semsik

 @cow24 didn't escape from @MrDodgy's attack in round five. @MrDodgy demonstrated why he was the top seed going into the event. 

After five rounds, the smoke had already cleared and the cream had risen to the top.

All three of the eventual winners cleared the last two hurdles cleanly to share the honors. However, there were still some interesting games on the lower boards in the last round. 

 Congratulations to @SpeedyChess11, @Cow24, and @MrDodgy for their dominating performance!

Bonus Puzzles

Here as some puzzles based on the games from the July events:

Round 3:

 This is a cool mate from round 6

Here's another from Round 6. The final position is on the board. White lost on time, but had a winning move. What was it?

Here's a critical position that helped determine the Tuesday winner:

 In the final round, asg2 made a few slight errors in the opening to reach an uncomfortable position. But then he made a simple developing move that... well, take a look!

Saturday round 1: