This tournament fielded a group of 20 players with a few new, and noticeable, faces: stan_b (1226)(from Central) and Ashvid_s (1200) (from Borlaug).
The participants were startled when they realized the highest rated participant was Stan. Since he was new, and an unknown, his rating made him seem larger than life. It wasn’t until Aryan (1227), from Weber, arrived to the scene that the students began to get their game faces on.
Aryan was upset by Sid after round one which lead everyone to believe Stan had the tournament in the bag. After the 2nd round Stan got super unlucky and lost a queen to Farhan. We were all assuming that Farhan would take the point, but I was abruptly notified that Farhan had accidentally stalemated Stan and split the point.
After the 3rd round, the leaders were Ashvid and Aydan with a perfect score (3.0). Aydan had upset the Thunder Quick 1 winner, Leon, after getting a great position from the opening.
Round 4 had the two unbeatens playing each other with Ashvid getting the white pieces. The game started off interesting but Aydan seemed to be carrying some of the fire from round 3 with him. He forked the rook and looked like he was going to beat Ashvid with his more active pieces but Ashvid spotted a back-rank issue for Aydan and quickly took advantage.
After 4th round I was thinking this would be a sweep for Ashvid because all the other challengers were not having the best event. I refreshed my browser and realized Farhan was clear 2nd place with a score of 3.5/4! I thought this would be an interesting matchup since Farhan had been performing well at his school chess club.
Going into round 5, Ashvid was rolling in with a rating of 1382 and Epic finish since Ashvid was one of the top players from his own club. The game started off bad for Farhan and did not get any better.
Ashvid was picking off piece after piece from Farhan leaving his king stranded in the center. The game was so one-sided I decided to stop commentating to give other games my attention. Moments later, I saw Farhan going crazy in the video. He was definitely on the worse end but set what he described as, a basic trap, that Ashvid had the misfortune of overlooking. He won on the spot with a Queen and Bishop checkmate. That goes to show that chess is a tough game that requires complete focus and discipline. All it takes is one oversight to turn a masterpiece into a smoldering pile of debris.
Nice job to all that participated, I look forward to the next event.
1st Place: Farhan 2nd Place: Leon 3rd Place: Ashvid
