Finegold on the STL Chess Club Championship
By GM Ben Finegold   
January 27, 2014
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2013 CCSCSL Champion 17-year-old Iskandar Aripov
The 2014 Club Championship took place January 24-26 at (you guessed it!) the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis.   The event was five rounds, with one round Friday night, and two each Saturday and Sunday.  I have played in a few of these events, but to my memory, this was by far the largest with 36 participants.

The Championship was also the strongest with four GMs participating and super-IM Priyadharshan “Pri” Kannappan.  WGM Anna Sharevich, FM Konstantin Kavutskiy, and WIM Inna Agrest rounded out the titled players.

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GM Georg Meier, Photo San Francisco 2011
Congrats to GM Georg Meier on winning clear first. He easily scored 4.5-0.5 by virtue of winning his first four and taking a perfunctory draw with Pri in the last round.  I was able to tie for second with Pri and, surprisingly, WIM Agrest, who was able to easily beat GM Denes Boros in the final round.

Check out a fragment from Ben's annotations below and find the full article on the CCSCSL website. 

 Aripov, Iskandar- Ben Finegold 


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27.Nf3 Nh4!
White was doing well earlier, but now black crashes through. 28.Raf1 Bxf3 29.gxf3 Rg8 30.Rg1 Rhg6 31.Rg4  31.Rxg6 Rxg6 32.Qb4 Qg5 33.Qb8+ Rg8 also wins for black.  31...Nxf3! 32.Rxg6 Rxg6 33.Rg2 Qh4 34.Qb4 Qxh2+!
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