In the Open Winter this Friday David and James played on board 1 knowing that the winner of this game would be able to claim first place – for a while. James with black chose the Dutch against David’s 1.d4 and he perhaps gave in the middle game a little too much space for white on the queen side which resulted in just enough pressure to breach the black position.

Michel with white played an equal game against Long’s Sicilian until in the beginning of the middle game Long managed to push his pawn to e4 and torture the white pieces in the center close to it such that there was some material loss down the road, enough for Long to play the game out precisely enough.

Henry with white played the exchange variation against Miguel Angel’s Philidor. Miguel kept an eye on the Philidor weakness d6 in this variation in a very creative way, with Ke7 and Bc7, and timed his break through on the queen side, pushing up the pawns b5 and a5 with all his pieces cooperating to the maximum, very well. Henry, having had to use a lot of time, resigned after Miguel had won a pawn and under the time pressure Henry ended up in, had created himself a winning position.

Conrad with white played aggressively against Melvin who had played h6 a little too early. Conrad’s piece sacrifice in the opening on the king side became thus a worthwhile venture and Melvin was never able to free up his position and after a good fight of many moves finally lost the game.

Ray, who played a very good game against Miguel Angel last week, misplaced some of his white pieces from somewhere halfway the opening against Koji who managed to win material and developed his black pieces in the game towards a win in a straightforward way.