August TNT Final Round

Babb - Tang 1-0

It looked like Ed had Jeff cramped up, but Qe5 exhanging queens and e4 allowing White to plant a knight on the great square d4 swung the advantage in Babb's favour.

Pottinger - Igal Raihman 0-1

This turned into a tactical melee, with pieces hanging everywhere. White's last chance for salvation appears to be 28. Ne1

Van Wyk - Lauritson 1-0

Joseph got a pawn roller going on the e and files, perfectly supported by pieces, and pushed them until Jim had enough.

Kong - Nikouline 0-1

Alex applied big pressure on the Kingside, and finished it off with a stock Q "sacrifice".

Schulz-Atem 1-0

After a lot of manoeuvering, the following position occurred after White's 29th move Nh4


Now Atem playe 29...Kh7 which is a decisive mistake. (I didn't see it myself). It is subtle, but it loses a critical tempo. It turns out
the King is needed on g7 to cover f6 and f7. As it is, Black's pieces are overloaded after 30.cb6 and 31. Bc5. See the rest of the game at http://www.chessmanitoba.com

Khedkar - Zhou 0-1

After 20 moves of a wild King's Gambit material equality was restored with s slightly more active position for Black. Jay ended up dropping a pawn and Zhou won the endgame.

Daniel Raihann - Evans 1-0

Black missed his chance to remove White's potentially dangerous bishop


with 16...Nxf3; as a result Black lost a pawn and then a piece. Perhaps he missed that after
17. Nxd8 Nxd2 18. Nxf7 Nc4 ! White's knight is lost. And after 18. Nxb7 Nc4 White has to
be aware of the threat of Bg5+ followed by Rxb7.

Huyhn - Magnusson 0-1

Saul won his second game around. In a overwhelming position for Black, my computer suddenly gave me an = sign. Apparently, Peter missed claiming a three fold repetition with announcing his intention to play 33. Qe4. The same position occured after White's 29th and 31st moves

Letain - Wood 1-0

I can only guess that this game ended in time trouble.

August TNT Round 3

Lauritson-Babb 0-1

Jeff slowly outplayed his opponent from a cramped position. White got a little passive, lost his d pawn, and Jeff exchanged down to a won K and pawns ending.

Rutter - Gibbons 1-0

Hard to believe if you look at the position below after White's's move 21. Bf4


21...d3 should just win the house, but see how White won in 8 more moves at http://www.chessmanitoba.com

Liu - Pottinger 0-1

Black played un petit combination to secure a winning advantage.
Black to play his 18th move below.

18...Nxe3 ! wins at least two pawns after 19. fxe3 Qxe3+ 20. Kh1 Rxf1 21. Qxf1 Qxd3
Nice !

Tang-Oberton 1-0 Battle of the King's Indian practitioners. Black had a very cramped position which Ed exploited with some fine play. Nothing flashy, but worth a look see.

Zhou-Schulz Draw - I am going to check to see if there if something wrong with the game score as there is mate in one available at move 23 ...Qg1#

Update: Blair Rutter indicates "There is no mistake in the Schulz game. Waldemar did indeed miss mate in one. There were 3 or 4 of us watching the game, doing our level best to remain expressionless as we saw him ponder the position for several minutes. As soon as he made his move, he realized his blunder, and jokingly said to me "I might as well give up chess now." We've all been there."

Kwiatek-Khedkar 1-0

Jordan played the speculative 21. Nxh7 to result in the position below.


Very interesting. Although the chess engines will say Black is winning, there are a lot of deadly threats to consider
See the full game at http://www.chessmanitoba.com

Igal Raihman - Huynh

Black had a dream dragon position after 17. Nb3.
The move for Black is ?


17...Qa6 Double attack on f1 and a2 and Black has a decisive advantage. Well, it is the TNT and as we all know anything can happen. Peter played Qb5, see the actual conclusion at chessmanitoba.com

Van Wyk - Daniel Raihman 1-0

One mistake in the opening gave Joseph a chance to have an attack that played itself.


Nikouline - Evans 1 -0

As I was going through this game I was thinking that Evans was having a good game, but I wanted to change my mind at move 27. He was having a GREAT game ! Wait, maybe there is a game score problem. No, unlikely, Alex is the great unsung hero of chessmanitoba, as he virtually single-handledly enters all these games for the databases. Believe me , it is not easy deciphering the game scores. Anyway, after Alex played 27. Bh5 the position below occurred.


and Brian played the forcing sequence that starts with Rf1+, etc, and then Qc4+ and took the pawn at e4 (a2 was also hangin) . So what happened ? Hint: It was a Tuesday night

August TNT Round 2

Week 2 - By the way, I am not commenting on every game, just those that have an interesting tactical shot, or ending or were just plain entertaining to play over. Your comments are always welcome (Boron) Full game scores at http://www.chessmanitoba.com

Top rated Jeff Babb defeated Joseph Van Wyk when the latter missed the power of 26. c6 .
25... Ke8 seems to hold everything, although White has an imposing looking Queenside pawn roller in the works.

Michael Gibbons must have had the chess gods on his side when Lu Zhou didn't play 32...Bxc1.

Position after 31. Nd6


Or 37...Rg6 ! Or am I missing something here ?

Jay Khedkar had a slight advantage for the entire game against Weixi Liu until he simplified into an ending with 31. Rc8 (or perhaps a few moves earlier) which turned out to be worse than it initially looked. I must say I was impressed with Liu's handling of that ending.

Lauritson defeated Igal Raihmann which featured pins and skewers all over the board.

Blair Rutter's fianchettoed bishops destroyed Alex Nikouline. There was no obvious big blunder that started the carnage.

Atem-Oberton 0-1 What can I say ? It's never over til it's over. Some kind of chess karma; as you may recall Tang-Atem from week 1

Wood-Kwiatek 0-1 Put your chess engines on this one.

Schulz-Letain 1-0 This game was equal until 30...e5 gave away a pawn and that was all Waldemar needed.

August TNT Round 1

Top rated Jeff Babb made the most of a difficult position and overcame Jordan Kwiatek.
Jordan's last chance at salvaging the game appears to be 35. Raa1 protected the back rank and keeping his a-passer.

The July TNT winner, Alex Nikouline survived a difficult Rook endgame against Carl Pottinger, that appears losing after 43...Kxg4



After Alex's 44. Kxc6, Kf3 will provide an escort for the e pawn. However, after 44...Rc8+ White was able to scoop both the d and e pawns. Rook endings are difficult and time was perhaps a factor as well.

One half upset was James Atem drawing with Black with Edward Tang (although he has drawn Ed before). The following position occurred after 17...



So for White there are two obvious Candidate moves ---Qxc3 and gxh7+. Which is best ? let's take a look without the assistance of the computer. If 18. Qxc3 threatening mate...f6 looks forced, and White wins an exchange and still has some dangerous threats. If 18. gxh7+ K xh7 19. Bxf8 discovered check. etc. If 18...Kh8 19. Qxc3+ f6 20. Bxf8 is similar to 18. Qxc3. So my puny sub-20000 brain says it doesn't make much difference, and really there is no practical difference. What actually happened ? Well James managed to generate a stalemate partially because of gxh7. Ok, I am stretching that a bit. Go to http://www.chessmanitoba.com to see the finale.

Another upset: Waldemar Schulz flagged against Weixi Liu in a much better, but tricky position.
Another half upset: Nathan Wood agreed to draw with Daniel Oberton.

Here is an interesting variation on a common tactic in the Sicilian.
White to move in Letain - Lauritson... Black has just played 12...Qh5


13. Nxd5 looks like it wins a pawn, although it is difficult to see that knight can survive a sortie to e7 in some lines after 13...Ng4. But it is a good practical try.

July TNT Final Round

Alex Nikouline won the tournament winning his last game over Jay Khedkar. It looked like a Morphy game, but according to the silicon beast, Alex erred at move 17.


Alex played 17. Qxc4+ which the computer gives as equal. But it is a tough position for Black and Jay lasted another 6 moves before calling it a day.

The crusher is apparently 17. Nd6 when after the essentially forced 17...Qxf7 18. Rxf7 Black loses the bishop on e7.

Ed Tang won his last game to score 4 -1 and finish second.

Tony Boron or Jim Lauritson had a chance to join Ed in second if their encounter was decisive

Jim had a pawn and pressure when this position after Black's (Lauritson) move 38.


I (Tony) immediately rejected Be1 as the knight on d4 is loose. 39. Nxc6 was the idea I had in mind several moves back with threats of mating after Nxe7+ and Qxf8. Jim played 39...Kh8
and now I played 40. Nxb4 instead of the easily winning Be1. I can only speculate that I didn't really look at Be1 as I had rejected it on the previous move. And that I was fixated on my original mating idea, (which ultimatelty helped me hold a draw).

See the games at http://www.chessmanitoba.com Tournaments and results.

TNT Game of the Night

Some wild games last night. Nikulin - Van Wyk is an obvious candidate although I have to look at Rutter - Raihman later.
Here is Nikulin - Van Wyk after 13...dxc3


See the entire game at http://www.chessmanitoba.com

July TNT after Round 2 of 5

Tournament: 2007 July TNT 

                        CFC#      Results     Total
01: Khedkar, Jay S.      102391     W15    W12    2.0
02: Lauritson, Jim       102783     W13    W14    2.0
03: Van Wyk, Joseph      123131     W16    D 9    1.5
04: Kaptsan, Aron        112549     W17    D 8    1.5
05: Tang, Edward         123723     D10    W20    1.5
06: Nikouline, Alexandre 112475     D 0    W18    1.5
07: Raihman, Igal             0     D11    W21    1.5
08: Rutter, Blair        132113     W22    D 4    1.5
09: Zhou, Lu             139779     W23    D 3    1.5
10: Atem, James          146062     D 5    W24    1.5
11: Goodman, Clifford    136888     D 7    D19    1.0
12: Pottinger, Carl      124202     W25    L 1    1.0
13: Lange, John          121045     L 2    W26    1.0
14: Raihman, Daniel           0     W26    L 2    1.0
15: Liu, Weixi           145394     L 1    W25    1.0
16: Huynh, Peter              0     L 3    W23    1.0
17: Campbell, Gary       146063     L 4    W22    1.0
18: Pang, Michael        143100     W24    L 6    1.0
19: Boron, Anthony       101126     D20    D11    1.0
20: Trueman, Francis     103193     D19    L 5    0.5
21: Lipic, Stephen       145479     D 0    L 7    0.5
22: Gibson, Fred         132549     L 8    L17    0.0
23: Husby-Wall, Evan          0     L 9    L16    0.0
24: Kwiatek, Jordan      131214     L18    L10    0.0
25: Magnusson, Saul      125303     L12    L15    0.0
26: Boggio, Joaquin           0     L14    L13    0.0