Taiwan Nationals 2014: part 7 -- Final day 2
Sunday was day 2 (of 4) of the finals. The top 12 players, as selected by a 11 round swiss, play a round-robin for the title.
After six rounds (each day is 3 rounds of 90+30 games), I have three points. Which likely puts me a little ahead of the middle, maybe at 5th place.
Three players stand out: Austin, Alex and Jei -- who after five rounds had 4.5 pts each (did not stay long enough after my last round to know their scores at the end). Tony, Lee and Jaby had a bad start and are around around 1 point each.
In Sunday's games I beat Lee (who had blundered two pawns by move 8) and Richard (who tried to build a bunker and draw by defending it). I lost to Sammy in a game that has been on my mind a while since.
Despite feeling that I played great chess, I lost the game. Picked an old stem game to follow for the theory (Torre vs Timman; Hamburg 1982), hopefully old enough for my younger opponent not to have studied it. To my amazement he found an improvement for white, winning a pawn at move 13! When this happened, even told Tony while stretching my legs that my opponent just picked a pawn from Jan Timman! (while black has some compensation, maybe I just failed to utilize it properly?).
This is one of my best games in the tournament, was very happy with my own play afterwards -- but what can you do when your opponent pretty much plays Houdini's first move every move? (not every move though, for instance move 13 is marginally Houdini's 2nd move).