Gibraltar Update Week 1

⌛️ Jan 25 2020

By Jim O'Neil

After five days, I have 3/5 in Challengers A and have put some nice chess under my belt. A few mistakes along the way but pretty much par for the course.

All games are available from the Gibraltar Chess website.

  1. White against a 2126 Spanish player. I played the Jobava London system and it became a queenside attack vs a kingside attack. Unfortunately, I was too slow and lost out on the Queenside.

  2. Black against a Dutch 2015 player. Played a Najdorf with my opponent playing some non-standard moves. Kept the opponent's bishop out of play for most of the second half and was winning but let white's kingside advance create chances for him.

  3. Black against weaker player from the Czech republic who fell to tactics on e6.

  4. White against a 2042 Spanish player. Missed a tactic early on and then my opponent fell for one of mine twice! Managed to force a rook fork but counted that a white pawn would queen so took a draw by repetition, missing an intermediate check that would have stopped the pawn.

  5. White against a 2056 guy from Serbia - as I pressed for an advantage, I sacrificed my queen for a rook, bishop and knight. The resulting position was good for me but had to be played carefully. I finished off with a pretty bishop sacrifice.

A good week with 2 draws and 2 wins and a performance of 2075.