The United States Chess Federation - New England Masters in Full Swing

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August

New England Masters in Full Swing

By Jennifer Shahade/Betsy Dynako

August 13, 2008

GM Timur Gareev, Photo Betsy Dynako

After four rounds of the New England Masters (Pawtucket, Rhode Island, August 11-15) , GM Timur Gareev leads with 4/4. At 3.5/4 are GMs Keith Arkell and Sergey Erenburg. Defending champion Leonid Kritz ceded two draws, to Justin Sarkar and Marc Esserman. Timur captured the sole lead with an attacking win against Jorge Sammour-Hasbun of Dos Hermanas fame. Sammour-Hasbun surely regretted castling queenside after Timur's clean and brutal attack. Sammour had to resign in the final position in view of the unstoppable threat, a2+ Ka1 Qc1 mating.

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Despite the disappointment for the strongest untitled player we can think of, Jorge can be proud of two swashbuckling wins of his own so far in the NE Masters:

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Jorge Sammour-Hasbun

Blunders and Brilliancies

44 players came out to New England to fight, which has resulted in a number of brilliancies, and of course the occasional time trouble blunder. Here is a selection.

With just a few seconds on his clock and a couple moves from time control, Hungaski played Nh7 in the following position. How did Esserman win instantly?

How does White win instantly after Nh7?

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Usually, journalists enthuasiastically print the games of young players defeating older masters, and CLO is no exception. In the NE Masters, there are a couple notable exceptions with the older player prevailing in each of the following cases.

Braden Bournival's win over Canadian junior Eric Hansen (who also blogged on the official website ) was cool because usually it's a bad sign for White in the Tarrasch if he ends up with a pawn on e5, but in this case, there was tactical justification:

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How did Paul MacIntrye finish off Stanford freshman Elliot Liu in the following position?

Position after 28.Kh2

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Our last example is admittedly frail on the age differential as the winner is just a year older than his opponent. But the winning move is unusual. How did Canadian junior Dan Kazmaier, playing White, win against Brandeis student Max Enkin?