Today I was on the receiving end of two relatively favourable pairings, as I found myself in the top half of players in my score group after both rounds today, meaning I was paired against lower rated players.
The morning round saw me playing black agianst MCC regular Felix Wyss & I employed the 'Sniper' Modern Defense. Although Felix grabbed the centre with d4, c4 & e4, I still went about playing the opening as if it was similar to the 'Broken Arrow' line I have posted videos about previously, & found myself in a good position after Felix overextended in the centre. I won a pawn with a tactic & slowly pushed my advantage, stopping any counterplay for Felix before launching a counterattack of my own. Faced with the loss of another pawn, which would leave him with a hopeless position, Felix resigned.
The afternoon round saw me paired against improving junior Jason Chew. Although I tried to steer the game towards my favourite Blackmar-Diemer Gambit, Jason declined the pawn & we found ourselves in a declined Alapin French. I quite like playing these positions as white & when Jason did not play the standard counter-attacking plan involving Qb6 & a variety of knight maneuvers on the queenside, I used my space advantage to squeeze the position, ultimately breaking through on the h-file & forcing resignation while there was material equality on the board. The big issue for Jason in this game was that he basically ran out of squares to move his pieces & I managed to keep most of the pieces on the board & this further exacerbated the problems of the space disadvantage.
There was another interesting aspect to round 5, with the top twelve boards all finishing with the result 1-0! I've only looked at the Morris-Cheng game very quickly, but it looked like a crazy game!
Now that I'm on 4/5, I find myself paired against Bill Jordan in the morning (I have white), so I expect a very tough day if I want to finish in the prizes!
Results are available on the Chess Victoria website.
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