Good News and Bad News: A Week 9 Recap

The match was characterized as a must-win situation for both teams (Isn't every match a must-win situation? Well, not quite as much as this one!), as the Los Angeles Vibe battled the Dallas Destiny for a chance at one of the 3 remaining playoff spots in the West (Arizona has been guaranteed a playoff berth for sometime now, and clinched the division this week. Los Angeles was unable to use a line-up with their big guns, GM Khachiyan and IM Matikozyan, but I still think we had good chances to win against a favored Dallas team. One thing to note regarding the strategy of this match was that Los Angeles's own NM Ankit Gupta had determined that the only way for the Vibe to get into the playoffs would be to win the next 2 matches by a total score of 7-1 (quite a feat, considering we're playing the division champion Arizona Scorpions next week!). This meant that a win by the margin of 2.5-1.5 would not be enough. This would somewhat explain the speculative nature of play made by FM Alexandre Kretchetov and myself, of course. We both lost, but fortunately for Los Angeles WFM Tatev Abrahamyan and NM Christian Tanaka came through, crushing their favored opponents!

So the good news is that Los Angeles drew a match with a much higher rated team. The bad news is that The Vibe are now officially eliminated from playoff contention. Here are the games!

Quite the up and down affair this week.

Kostya's Favorite Game of the Week
Winner: GM Renier Gonzalez (MIA) - GM Megsen Amanov (CHC)

Wow did I like this game! GM Amanov just played great chess with Black and practically refuted White's setup! Be sure to look at Amanov's instructive annotations here.

That's it for Week 9! Next week the Vibe take on the Arizona Scorpions, in a game that will have almost no effect on the playoff spots! Check back here for a recap of that match!