Chess is a Gentleman's Game

Twenty-six players showed up to take part in the first round of Tuesday Night Action 30. This week's feature game between Gary Newson(2014) and Patrick McCartney(2131) is a King's Indian Defense, Petrosian Variation. After looking at this game, one would think a couple of gentlemen were playing. Each player appeared to have wanted to give the point away to the opponent, and yet neither side would take it! Black makes the first mistake, but then follows up with a tricky gambit of a pawn where White fails to take advantage of it, missing a very thin line that actually works for him. Black then gains the advantage, but it is hard to convert, and time starts becoming an issue. Black continues to make a series of non-fatal errors, each one getting bigger as his clock continues to diminish. Finally, Black cracks and blunders on the 46th move, but almost immediately after White has been given another opportunity to take the full point, he makes a silly error, and a draw was finally agreed. The game can be viewed below.


Meanwhile, on board two, Vishnu Vanapalli(1975) and Pradhy Kothapalli(1870) go at it, and while the latter proceeded to go up a pawn, he was unable to take advantage of it in a queen and pawn ending and they also declared peace. This allowed the bottom two boards to determine the leaders of the section after one round, and in this case, black dominated. Aditya Shivapooja(1767) took down Ali Shirzad(1695) while David Richards(1641) defeated William Clayton(1748).

In the lower section, there is an 8-way tie for the lead after one round as Marnzell Hand(1600) beat Carlos Zuniga(1497), Segun Kamara(1586) took down Andrew Jiang(1483), Carl McKern(1534) defeated Corey Frazier(1404), Julian Parker(1427) pulled the upset on Ervon Nichols(1571), Hassan Hashemloo(1307) ripped apart Debs Pedigo(1340), Monish Behera(1251) annihilated Aditya Vadakattu(1062), Aarush Chugh(1174) got the best of Rithvik Prakki(1193), and Richard Trela(1092) executed a premeditated assault on James Middlebrooks(1008). In the meantime, Sampath Kumar(1448) and Luke Harris(1585) declared peace.

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