In round 2 we unfortunately saw a couple of empty boards and consequently some regulatory wins and losses: too bad.
A board that remained empty for a long time was Sydney’s who arrived with only 30 minutes left on his clock, and despite his opponent being FM Luen-Wah, the game resulted in a draw!
Another remarkable game was played between Seth against Michael. Michael is clearly a very talented youth, but as he was multi-tasking and reading his book when Seth was in deep thoughts to find the best moves, he did not put up serious resistance enough on the board to neutralize Seth’s kingside attack.
Perhaps the most remarkable game was played between Caissa’s Peter and Aravind. Peter had pushed his pawns on the kingside up to pressure his opponent into a very defensive position.
Peter plays 0-0-0 ...
The position looked more or less like the diagram above when Peter found an in principle logical move, castling long to get more firepower behind his advanced king pawns. Yet, it turned out to be a checkmate in 1, to himself, when Aravind responded to 0-0-0 with Rc8xc3+…
Next week we will follow Caissa’s members in round 3 when Peter will play against Joe Lau and David will face Billy Lo.
Ranking after 2 rounds:
Hong Kong Chess Open 2012 Ranking after Round 2
