This Thursday (October 19th) we already had our 4th round of the internal competition. As we've played some rounds in the meantime you can see that the pairing is now leading to a lot of exciting games. People of somewhat equal strength are now being paired against each other and so the tension is starting to run high.
I played with the black pieces against Sunil this time. Although Sunil lost a pawn early on, he still got some compensation for that as well with some attacking chances. He also played quite accurate to be honest, where he was able to keep quite an equal game, until move 23. Here he took with his knight on g6, which cost him the game.
I will not spoil the ending but will leave it to you to see how to finish this :).
After that I got to enjoy a number of very interesting games that were still going on. In the game between Anton and Mahmoud I saw them come to a very interesting and difficult end game where both were running to the other side of the board to get a queen simultaneously and now were trying to find a way to see if they could win some pawns/the queen in order to win the match. In the end they had to conclude on a draw.
In the game between Bahadir and Patrick, I started watching the game when Patrick was a piece up against one or two pawns (can't remember exactly). Patrick definitely had the better chances, but was also way down on his clock, with only seconds left and living on the increment. So, with the pressure of the clock, he was trying to find the way to materialize this advantage further. Bahadir had more time on his clock and was able to keep his cool. In the end the knight was won, some pawns got captured on both sides and also here they needed to agree on a draw.
In the game of Pepijn and Victor I started following the game when Victor was a piece up, which was stuck behind Pepijn's pawns and both of them had a queen and a rook. Victor was trying to look for ways to capture some pawns and to keep his king safe in the meantime. He made it a bit too difficult for himself however, giving Pepijn the opportunity to capture some pawns as well and expose his king. With the king on the run, Victor should have gone for the draw (I think), but he was trying to still go for a win. With his king on the run, he ended up in a pin however, losing his queen and the game...
The game of Joshua and Alexis I didn't follow much to be honest. They were still stuck in the middle game and there was too much calculation to be done. All I could see was that there was a material imbalance where Joshua was up a rook for a bishop and Alexis was trying to go for the king. The attack didn't look too dangerous (from a distance :)) and Joshua was able to defend this, gain a piece more even and after some time Alexis needed to resign.
From the game between Nuwan and Viktor, I only saw in passing by that Victor was a queen down at some point in time. I have not much more context, but soon after that I saw that he was being checkmated. So, I guess that in this case Nuwan was a bit too strong for Viktor at this moment in time.
Full results and standings below:
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