Untitled Tuesday Reminder and January Recaps
Here we go again! Our next event is tomorrow, Tuesday February 6th. We will start at 3:30 PM Pacific time, 23:30 UTC, which should give time for Titled Tuesday to finish. Time zone converter: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Untitled+Tuesday&iso=20180206T2330
This will be a ten round event. The time control will be three minutes with two seconds of increment.
The use of computer assistance is not permitted. Games will be monitored for fair play violations. Please do not cheat - we have multiple experienced cheater-hunters in this club, and we will be watching.
To join, go into the live chess server and select the Tournaments tab. The Untitled Tuesday event will appear in the list an hour before it is due to start. You can also use this link: https://www.chess.com/live#t=931624.
Saturday Event
Since there is no time that works for everyone, we will vary the time of the Saturday event every month to accommodate different time zones. If the time one month doesn't work, maybe next month will be better.
This month, we will go with 13:00 UTC, Saturday February 10th. Time zone converter: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Untitled+Tuesday&iso=20180210T1300. We will send out one reminder news post on Friday.
Again, we will go with ten rounds.
See our schedule of upcoming events for the time of future Saturday events: https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/schedule-of-upcoming-events
January Recaps
This report was written by @MGleason
The first event of 2018 was won by one of 2017's double winners, @Dominus_et_Deus. However, despite an excellent 9/10 score, it was not a one-man show.
@Dominus_et_Deus established the first lead in the fifth round with a win over @chessforthesun in which he demonstrated that bad bishops can still perform a valuable defensive role.
But @Everyfishknows struck in the sixth round to take the lead:
@chessforthesun won in the seventh round to take a share of the lead. An interesting game where an vicious kingside assault led to queenside domination.
After seven rounds, there was a three-way tie between @Dominus_et_Deus, @Noctis_Lucis_Caelum, and @chessforthesun, with @everyfishknows half a point behind. @Noctis_Lucis_Caelum (later banned for fair play violations) beat @chessforthesun, while @Dominus_et_Deus and @Everyfishknows kept pace with him.
In the ninth round, @Everyfishknows beat @Noctis_Lucis_Caelum with a nice tactic; @Noctis_Lucis_Caelum dropped out after the loss.
This left @Dominus_et_Deus half a point clear of @Everyfishknows, with @chessforthesun another half point back, with one round to go. All three of the top players finished with wins, giving @Dominus_et_Deus the first win of 2018.
The Saturday event saw our fourth perfect score, and only our third legitimate one. This time it was @Ast_F who dominated, with a very solid (albeit quite human) performance.
For the first four rounds, @chessguy1012 matched him win for win. Here was a nice win over @tevdore2:
An apparent fifth-round mouse-slip from @chessguy1012 against @SmyslovFan left @Ast_F with the sole lead. @chessguy1012 fell out of contention in subsequent rounds.
@Ast_F stretched his lead in the seventh round with a win over @SmyslovFan:
@Ast_F continued to beat all comers, but the race for second was very competitive, with @SmyslovFan, @mouse_mouse_mouse, @chessguy1012, and @Otocolobus_manul all tied on 5/7. However, @SmyslovFan beat @mouse_mouse_mouse, and @chessguy1012 and @Otocolobus_manul both lost as well, giving @SmyslovFan a clear lead.
The top three boards all won in the last two rounds. We'll finish off with a couple wins from @Ast_F.
First, he successfully repelled a kingside pawn storm from @chess_pagol, before sending his own kingside pawn mass across the board. There are few sights more intimidating than five connected passed pawns marching on your king.
And finally, a nice positional squeeze that leads to tactics:
