San Diego Surfers Draw After Late Chengdu Pandas Comeback
The San Diego Surfers drew with the Chengdu Pandas after a tense last round comeback by the Chinese team. Once again, GM YU Yangyi played well, scoring 3.5/4; a half-point off his perfect score last week, but who's counting? Certainly a candidate for Game Of The Week occurred in round three. Watch GM Wang Yue find a cunning sacrifice (and a not-so-obvious follow up) against San Diego's board one, GM Alexey Dreev. The resulting endgame play is instructive as well.
Entering round four with a match score of 7-5, San Diego had only to maintain the balance with a comfortable two point advantage. Chengdu would have to score 3/4 in the final round to draw even. Once again, the Chengdu board four, this time Li Zhaoyang, surpassed expectations and turned a bad position in a winning one to help clench the comeback.
Can I brag about this? #prochess pic.twitter.com/B2iSfoVLoL
— Tatev Abrahamyan (@Tatev__A) January 26, 2018
What a finish! Chengdu found their form and managed to come back: we scored 1-3 in round 4, so ended 8-8. An exciting match from start to finish, with lots of drama. Gotta love #prochessleague! Thanks to our lineup, Dreev, Sevian, Bryant, @Tatev_A, for a hell of a show!
— San Diego Surfers (@SD_Surfers) January 26, 2018
2018 PRO Chess League | Week 2 | San Diego Surfers vs Chengdu Pandas
| Pandas | Surfers | Alexey Dreev | Samuel Sevian | John Daniel Bryant | Tatev Abrahamyan | 8 |
| Yu Yangyi | 3.5 | |||||
| Wang Yue | 3 | |||||
| Li Di | 0.5 | |||||
| Li Zhaoyang | 1 | |||||
| 8 | 2.5 | 2 | 1.5 | 2 | ||
