2014 Sudbury Championship - Part 2 - Saturday

Normally, the Sudbury Championship is a three day event.  Actually, in the olden days before I existed, it was a two day event.  The problem was that so many local players were taking round 1 byes because they didn't want to wake up early and/or play three games in a day, that legitimate contenders for first place were at risk of being handed a full-point forced bye.  That said, by playing one of the five games on Friday night instead of packing three into Saturday, the organizers figured they might get a few more people to play.  Long story short, everybody took round 1 bye's anyways. So... we're back to a more 'out of town friendly' format.

Okay, great.  The games.

My round 1 opponent played a very solid KIA with the white pieces.  I managed to create a textbook superior minor piece, but had difficulty finding a way to open the position to my advantage.  While I was goofing around trying to find a pawn lever or something, white went ahead and opened the position for me and the rest took like 4 moves.

Round two I had white in a Symmetrical English where black tried to stay symmetrical too long and ended up having difficulty developing the queenside.  I won using less than 7 minutes on my clock.  My opponent specifically asked that this game not be published, so I won't post it here.  He was rated right around 1900, so I might actually get a rating point or two for this win.

Round three I finally played another master.  NM Demmery went for his normal London System, but must have gotten a move mixed up somewhere.  The game ended up looking as though I had the white pieces.  I'm not quite sure what white did wrong, but I managed to win with black in 26 moves against a fairly strong NM, so that's not so bad.

And now for your viewing pleasure, rounds 1 and 3.

Game 1

Game 3