Snowballs cool down Abuja Rockstars - Recap of Week 4

In the 4th Round of the PRO Chess League we were paired against one of the Nigerian teams - Abuja. A relatively unknown team, always ready to surprise. Sadly they suffered connection issues, which resulted in several forfeits. The match thus seemed much tighter than the actual score of 11-5 in our favor. The Rockstars had signed up the following players for this match: FMs Marko Makaj, Kigigha Bomo, IM Oladapo Adu, CM Campbell Charles, FM Ajibowo Olamide Patrick. While the Snowballs prepared GMs Georg Meier, Evgenij Agrest, Andre Diamant and WIM Inna Agrest for a fight.

One of our players talked a little bit too much before this match, but then he scored 4 points so presumably he was entitled to all the talking… This was the first week with the reversed parings, which meant that board 1 started out against board 4, board 2 against board 3 etc.

As you can see the match didn’t exactly start out the way we planned. We quickly had to continue to round 2 to try to correct our mistakes in r1 and we were fairly successful, but not without some help from our opponents:

In r3 we ran into problems. We did have quite good chances on our last board, but some calculations were required.

Before the last round we had managed to collect 7 points and therefore only needed 1.5 to win the match. The first point came quickly as Abuja faced some connection issues and unfortunately forfeited on the last board. Then the question was which GM would bring the necessary ½ point first. It turned out that it would be GM Diamant, who finished off his game with a funny sacrifice.

Next week the Stockholm Snowballs are up against the Atlanta Kings. The stakes are getting higher. Make sure to watch on Saturday at 4:00 GMT!