SPICE Cup Round 5 Report

Hello again, I am back to report on round 5 of the SPICE Cup.  Today's round was very exciting because of all of the hard fought games!  IM Dean Ippolito had a very nice position against GM Ben Finegold.  It looked like Dean was well on his way to another win, but not so fast.  Dean was in time trouble so this let Ben crawl back into the game, and eventually win!  It was a very tough loss for Dean but let's hope he gets back on track.  GM Gergely Antal had a very scary attack on GM Anatoly Bykhovsky, but Bykhovsky defended expertly and drew the game. IM Daniel Rensch drew his game vs IM Irina Krush.  Rensch played the exchange variation instead of his usual Panov-Botvinick attack against the Caro-Kann which was interesting.  FM Darwin Yang scored a nice win over GM Andre Diamant!  This is Darwin's 3rd straight win after starting out 0-2.  He needs 1 more point out of 4 games for an IM norm and 3 more points for a GM norm. GM Davorin Kuljasevic and IM Bryan Smith drew their interesting game.

GM Zoltan Almasi and GM Wesley So had a draw.  GM Ray Robson had a nice position against GM Alexander Onischuk but GM Onischuk was able to fight back into the game and eventually win because of a few blunders by Robson.  Also, GM Georg Meier had a nice win vs GM Eugene Perelshteyn, widening Georg's lead in the A-group!!  Tomorrow the A and B blitz tourney is going to start!  It's going to be awesome!

Below are some more pictures from chessdailynews.com!

GM Susan Polgar looking at an interesting position

A good view of most of the B-group

A nice picture of the Texas Tech bell tower

Feast your eyes on this awesome trophy