An Open and Shut Case

22 players showed up to compete in the 4th round of Tuesday Night Action 29. The top board is our feature game this week, where Sulia Mason(1981) took on Patrick McCartney(2053) in what starts off with a line in The Classical Fianchetto System of the Nimzo-Indian Defense where White attempts early expansion on the Queenside. Black tries to shut down White's attack, but in return he must give White one opportunity to open the position on move 14, and once White decides not to take, Black immediately locks the Queenside shut and at the same time, creates a protected passed pawn that White must keep an eye on all through the game. The next stage of the game sees a lot of maneuvering until Black finally shuts the position down completely with a Good Knight versus Bad Bishop scenario, and only then proceeds to open up once again, on the other side of the board that is with White's problem being that it's significantly easier for Black to rapidly get his heavy pieces across to the King side after it's opened up than it is for White's heavy pieces to get across, and when all is said and done, White's pieces are all bundled up on the Queen side and are unable to come to the rescue of their majesty in time. The game can be viewed below.



The win gives McCartney a half point lead with a round to go.

Elsewhere in the top section, Michael Uwakwe(2082) played an offbeat Anti-Sicilian (2...d6 3.Bc4) and proceeded to take down Vishnu Vanapalli(1960). Pradhy Kothapalli(1867) snagged a couple of pawns and it proved to be too much for William Clayton(1811) while Aditya Shivapooja(1750) defeated David Blackwelder(1706).

In the Under 1700 Section, section leader Daniel Boisvert(846) was defeated by Marnzell Hand(1607), but still has a one point lead while Ali Shirzad(1463) beat Andrew Jiang(1438) in order to be the only other player within a point of the leader. The upset of the night goes to Richard Trela(1118) who pulled off a draw against Ervon Nichols(1615). The other winners include David Richards(1673), Segun Kamara(1617), and Monish Behera(1228) while Aditya Vadakattu(1076) and Samuel Reiman(Unrated) declared peace.

The cross table can be viewed here.