The French Revolution

A total of 20 players arrived to take part in round 4 of Tuesday Night Action 30. Those that remember facts from their history class will recall that the French Revolution overthrew the monarchy, which had direct impact on the rest of the world and caused a global decline in monarchies and was replaced by republics and democracies. Well, another French Revolution took place Tuesday night at the top two boards where the French successfully took down the White monarchs!

On board 1, Dominique Myers(2117) took on Gary Newsom(2014) in a Two Knights French. Black proceeded to win two exchanges, leading to a tricky late middle game position where White attempts to execute a fake attack on the Black King, pointing his Bishop and Queen at g7 and trying to use his Knight to sneak a trick by Black. Black actually proceeds to make a major error in the form of allowing White to reach a 3-fold repetition, but when it happened, White failed to claim it and instead hit the clock. After that, Black never looked back as he returned one of his two exchanges by giving up one of his Rooks to eliminate the White Knight, and the rest of the process was fairly elementary, and Black went on to victory, giving him a full point lead at 3.5 after 4round.

Meanwhile, at board 2, Vishnu Vanapalli(1975) took on Patrick McCartney(2131) in what was also a French Defense, in this case the Tarrasch Variation. Black proceeds to play the more modern 5...Nf6 in the Open Tarrasch instead of the older 5...Nc6, and proceeded to equalize fairly quickly. After trading away his Knight and Bishop for a Rook and two Pawns, the position continued to be relatively equal with possibly a slight preference for Black in the sense that by move 20, White was playing for 2 results. Draw or loss. The position slowly dwindled for White and he proceeded to blunder on move 31 when White has no recourse and must drop a piece and is eventually mated on move 57.

The game can be viewed below.



Elsewhere in the top section, Ali Shirzad(1695) defeated David Richards(1641) while Aditya Shivapooja(1767) and Pradhy Kothapalli(1870) declared peace.

In the lower section, idle Sampath Kumar(1448) continues to hold the lead by a half point over a number of players with 2, including David Blackwelder(1669), Marnzell Hand(1600), Ivan Manchev(1528), Aarush Chugh(1322), and Rithvik Prakki(1193), all of whom won this week, along with 4 others that sit half a point behind the leader. The other winner in the lower section was Luke Harris(1585) who took down Ervon Nichols(1571).

The current cross table can be viewed here.