Copyright by www.ben3w.com
I have played in 2008 Atlantic Open and did pretty well: end up with 3 out of 5 points. I won the first game, lost second, won third, won forth and lost fifth one (very unfortunately).
The tournament took place in the heart of Washington D.C. in the very nice (but expensive) Westing Hotel. It was a big tournament about 300 registered players, 5 Grandmasters (Sergey Kudrin, Sergey Erenburg, Alexander Stripunsky, Alexander Shabalov and Leonid Kritz ) and many more IMs and FMs. I went to Washington with 4 other players, two of which were members of Central Delaware Chess Club (the club I belong to) and the other two players played for Milsbury Chess Club (Maryland). We arrived to Washington at around 4pm, while the first round starts at 7pm. Myself and Dean Miller played in U1700 section, Leon Tschantre played in U 1500, Clinton Young played in U1900 and Darrel West was brave enough to play in OPEN (!).
I had white in the first round and played with Paul Nago who has 1650. I won the game and was pretty satisfied with the result and with my game too. After the game we went to the analysis room with Dean, who showed me couple of good moves I could have made, but didn’t. He also showed me many better ways to win (or draw) for my opponent which were proved too be wrong after detailed analysis (at least some of them).
The second round starts at the 11 am next morning, so I watched a bit of Olympics and went to bed. In the morning we all met up at the restaurant right above the playing hall and Clinton showed a few interesting games he played before and was proud of.
In the second round I played with James Loo, as black. He surprised me in the opening but I did quiet okay. He’ve gotten some positional advantage in the middle game since my pieces were somewhat uncoordinated. But, after the exchanges took place and I reorganized my pieces on the board I felt that we are at least equal. After few more moves I hit James with a combination which literally depressed him and I won a good pawn for free. He did not give up and after another 5 moves I played a tarrible blunder loosing a minor piece. He won that game… I felt very upset about that. It’s very depressing to loose a won game.
But, oh well, it is life. The next game is coming up and I have to play well. On the next round something funny happened. I played as white and after about 45 minutes and 15 moves made I’m getting informed that I’m playing in the wrong section, on the wrong board (I played in U2100 instead of my U1700 and did not even realize it). I went to find my board and find out that my clock was ticking all that time. I had 1:10 min for the 40 moves now. My opponent has full 2 hours. It was a 12 year old Indian kid, who played very well. The first question he asked me when I finally arrived: “Are you Yury Shulman? ”, joking. We played closed variation of Semi-Slav, I played rather quick and traded pieces ASAP. In the rook endgame he did a mistake and lost the game. Now I was 2 out of 3 with 2 more to go. I was happy, I managed to win even though so much behind on time. The whole game took me only 25 minutes.
The next morning I had white pieces again. In five round Swiss somebody plays 3 games as white, but somebody - only 2. So I got lucky with 3 games as white. The opponent was very late and after 30 minutes I start thinking that if he’ll be “no-show” for one hour I win the game by forfeit. But that never happened. He came 35 minutes late. He played very confident chess and after only 22 moves I had a hopeless position. I had absolutely no good moves his bishops completely dominated my “bad” knights and a rook and his rook was coming to get me… But that’s what makes chess the greatest game of all times. Even when there is seems to be no hope a chess player finds something… some extra resource, some good move or tactics and hope is back and life is great again. It happened to me in this game against Gee Young. I found a nice way to sacrifice a material and if he accepts it, we’re at least equal or it even turns the table around. I won that game and now 3/4 with one game remaining.
The last game supposes to be the toughest it will decide who will get what. I played with Adip Bhargov, from India. I was black this time. I got very familiar position in the beginning of middle game but made a wrong decision and lost two pawns. Now I’m facing rook and pawn endgame being 2(!) pawns down. The chess is one single game where price of an error is so high. Whatever you do, does no matter how well you play in the endgame it is almost impossible to get even a draw.
I won one of his pawns but it wasn’t enough and he won the game and got 3 rd place. I got 5 th in U 1700, picked up 55 rating points and became a class B player. Next goal is to break 1800.
Clinton Young got second in U1900 with 4 points. GMs Sergey Erenburg and Alexander Stripunsky won 40th Atlantic Open with 4.5/5.
