Michel had the chance to break free half a point if he would have won in round 3 against James. However, after winning a pawn, Michel took perhaps a few moves too many to bring his king into safety before commanding his pieces to an assault on the white position. James found just enough time to position his pieces for an effective set-up to breach black’s center and queen side and claim the win.

Ray played an excellent game against Miguel Angel and came better out of the opening stretching his material advantage of one pawn deep into the endgame. It was here though where Miguel Angel understood the position better and a slight positional inaccuracy of Ray moving his king just one square too far from a pawn island in need of protection was enough for Miguel Angel to neutralize Ray’s knight and evaporize Ray’s 2-pawn island with his bishop and steer towards a win.

Melvin with white played dynamically through the center against Henry, but as Melvin pushed his pawns, even onto d6 in the middle game, Henry found ways to infiltrate white’s open position via the queen side and disorganized the coordination of white’s pieces enough to gain decisive material advantage.

As Koji and David had a BYE, the final game of the evening was between Long against Conrad. Conrad with black ventured the position into a Scandinavian with Nf6. Long went for a side variation with a killer move Na3 trapping black’s queen who was eyeing Ra1. Despite a queen for a rook down, black’s pieces were active enough to put up some hurdles for white to develop quickly but Long played patiently and the impact of his material advantage increased move by move until finally black had to resign.

 

 

Pairing for coming Friday will be done Wednesday 12 noon – below is the cross-table ranking.