Slugfest: A Week 7 Recap

Panic was the main emotion felt by the Vibe during the Week 7 fight between the Los Angeles Vibe and the Seattle Sluggers. A match where the Vibe was out-rated by 100 points started pretty much as expected by many outsiders--we'd be in trouble early. One of our best performing players, FM Alexandre Kretchetov, was facing his biggest challenge yet in having the white pieces against Seattle super-GM Varuzhan Akobian (who lives in Southern California, and was actually playing at our site--see pictures below). After an opening disaster Alex resigned before some of us had even looked at his game! Yours truly was playing his second game of the season, and his first as a Board 3! After some dubious opening play by WGM Katerina Rohonyan, I was able to win my game and even the score at 1-1. 

At this point the match was not looking so great. NM Ankit Gupta was defending under some heavy pressure by NM Joshua Sinanan and FM Joel Banawa had just played a strong queen sac that turned out to be losing on the spot against FM Slava Mikhailuk. This meant it was all on Mr. Gupta, who had traded down into a drawn rook endgame and in mutual time-pressure was looking for chances to win and tie the match. I was full of hope, of course, because I felt we were owed one after last week's misfortune (where we drew a match we should have won) Luckily, Mr. Gupta was actually able to swindle his opponent by creating some dangerous passed pawns and having the presence of mind to trade down into a winning king-and-pawn endgame.