Justin Chu vs Josh Phillips

Josh is black and it's his turn. Josh has been playing the mirror game.  The position is very symmetrical. It usually is fine for black to start this way but the longer the mirror lasts, the worse it get for Black. White has just played Nd5. The position is now extremely complicated with both bishops on the g-file hanging and the knights attacking each other. You should recognize this as a time to slow down and think through the position carefully. Black's turn. What's the bet move.

     If you tried to continue the mirror game like Josh did with Nd4 things go badly. hxg4 hxg5 Nxg5 and now Nxg4 fails o Qxg4.

     The best move here is Bxf3 with an attack on the queen. White can play either Qxf3, Nxf6+, or Bxf6 with a counter attack on our queen.If Qxf3 hxg5 and you're up a piece. If Nxf6+ gxf6 Qxf3 fxg5 and again you're up a piece. Bxf6 is actually White's only good move. After trading queens and then bishops, the game remains even.

Josh vs. Noah

Josh, playing white, found the winning move. What was it?

A. Discovered attack wins the queen. Na7+ followed by Qxe5

Max Dietrich vs. Anton

Q1. Max has just played g4. It look suspicious should we take it?

Q2. A few moves later Max captured Anton's pawn on e4 with his knight. How could Anton have taken advantage of this error?

A1. Anton castled his king onto an open file - always a bad idea. If he takes the poisoned pawn on g4, Max will play Rg1 pinning it to the King. The game continued 15. ... Nxg4 16. Rg1 h5 17. f3 and the knight is lost.
A2. Not learning from the first position, Max captured a pawn on e4 with his knight (he should ahve taken with the d-pawn) Now Max's knight is pinned and all Anton has to do is ATTACK THE PINNED PIECE WITH THE SMALLEST PIECE POSSIBLE !  (Yes, I was shouting.) Because Anton attacked it with his bishop instead of playing the simple d5! He could have just about evened up the score here, but I'm guessing Anton had already given up and was no longer thinking.
PEOPLE - I teach you these things so you can use them in games!

Anton vs Francisco Cassellius

Here' a position from Anton vs Francisco. Anton is white and play b3? two moves ago, which was a mistake. Franscisco castled and Anton played Bb2?
Q1) What should have Anton played instead?
Q2) What good move did Francisco find?

Eventually Anton lost when he put his King and Queen on the same color and Frankie forked him with a knight. Anton's mistake above was moving b3 which pinned his own knight to his rook. Bb2 didn'r really help because now the knight is simply pinned to the bishop instead. Anton should have played c3 instead of Bb2, thereby getting out of that pin as quickly as possible. Frankie took advantage of the pinned and therefore immobile knight with th simple c5 - attack the pinned piece with the smallest piece possible.

Tournament Results and New Ratings

TOURNAMENT RESULTS
Tom Miranda, Lendale, Magnus, and Tom McD. - I didn't get any notated games from you. Do you still have some? I'll put your games up on the blog if you do.
....................OLD..NEW.CHG.MERIT
Miranda, Thomas....1237 1193 -44 174
Sullivan, Frank.....792. 745 -47 21.5
Priborkin, Anton....674. 651 -23 9
Nordby, Magnus......592. 643 +51 12.5 Earned Bronze today
Phillips, Josh......553. 550 -03 2
McDermott, Thomas...538. 524 -14 4.5
Smith, Lendale......396. 365 -31 1
Full results are available at www.schoochess.org
Note to Lendale - there were 6 players who won fewer than 2 games. Unfortunately, because half the players were from Metcalf, you and a number of other players had to play Metcalf, even though their records were better than yours. So unfortunately you never got a chance to play the players you could have beaten.

RATINGS

Miranda, Thomas....1193
Henry, Mace.........873
Sullivan, Frank.....745
Priborkin, Anton....651
Nordby, Magnus......643
Phillips, Josh......550
McDermott, Thomas...524
Smith, Lendale......365
Hahnfeldt, Carter...332
Barnard, Joe........321
Johnson, Evan.......236
Gotham, Angela......229
Lee, Keighvin.......221
Meyer, Oliver.......216
Nordby, Annikka.....163
Kainz, Andres.......150
Metz-Taylor, Grant..121
Church, Ben.........117
Lee, Aidan..........106
Williams, Brigham...100
Meyer, Misha........100

Tomorrow's tournament

Bring lunch or money for lunch ($5 or 6 should do)
We've got a good group signed up so far:
8th grade Tom Miranda, Magnus Nordby, Lendale Smith
7th grade Anton Priborkin, Josh Phillps, Frank Sullivan
6th grade Tom McDermott

Anyone else is welcome - just show up before 8:30 at Metcalf, register at the front desk and tell them you're from Friendly Hills and the School is paying. Questions - call 651-451-8412

What you missed today

All  after-school activities were cancelled by the district today and of course that included chess club.
We'll do the lesson and worksheet on discovered attacks next week.

Chess tournament is still on at this point for Saturday 8:30 at Metcalf. School will pay fees. You can register either by going to the schoolchess.org website or by calling me at 451-8412 before Friday at 6:30pm.

Nationals are taking place in Orlando next weekend. 5th graders Franklin Zhou 1781, and Karthik Padmanaban 1867 should do well.

Reminder - I've got chess sets available for Christmas gifts - see previous blog for details.