Friday, December 11, 2009

ZWISHENZUGS

I, Superjem, together with Superpeon, made a 4545 league team. This tournaments' time control is 45 minutes and a 45 second increment per move. We joined this league because its a good practice for our chess skills and the team that wins gets a one month extension. Our team is called ZWISHENZUGS and it is composed of six members. The members are the team captain Superjem, assistant team captain Superpeon, third board Darkwizard1, ICC tournament manager Ehab, and the two alternates, my friends crazyhorses and seattleblues. We just passed through the qualifiers with a one point margin in the tiebreaks. I'll just make a recap of what happened on our six qualifying rounds. We did pretty well during the first four rounds. I and Superpeon won our first four games which always gave us a big edge against our opponents. Our only problem is Ehab. He lost his first three games due to miscalculated sacrifices which leads to his defeat. Luckily, Darkwizard1 always scored the last needed point to clench every round. We have already decided to give Ehab a rest and let our alternate crazyhorses play. Unfortunately, a misunderstanding between me and Superpeon made us forget to give our new line up. We won the first three games of the fourth round and we have already won the round. Ehab also won the fourth game which gave us a 4 - 0 win against our opponents. By this round, we were already one and a half point ahead of the second team. With only two rounds to go, we only needed one more match point and we would qualify. In the fifth round, we are to play against the solo second, Primates of the Caribbean. Me and my assistant team captain also decided to let Ehab play because he already won a game. We thought that he has fired up and would paly better in the next rounds. In the fifth round, we were instantly down 0 - 1 because Darkwizard1 can't play. He told me that he have an important tournament to play during the week. Fortunately, Ehab fired his best shots against his opponent and got us a point. We were tied 1 - 1. I drew my game against Campagnolo because I joined an early morning tournament in ICC. I woke up at 2:45am, the tournament ended at 8:30am and I stupidly offered to play my 4545 league game at 10:00am. I preffered to get some sleep so I drew when I saw the chance of a repetition. By then, we were tied 1.5 - 1.5. I am not sure what happened with Superpeon, but he unfortunately blundered and lost his game. Now were only leading by a half point and we have to win our last round to qualify. During the last round, Darkwizard1 made some mistake which his opponent Jefferyx instantly capitalized and so we lost a point, 0 - 1. Ehab increased his winning streak to three and made our team equalize, 1 - 1. I scheduled my game at 9:00pm and I have school the next day. I played as fast as I could and my time did not even get below 45 minutes. My opponent intelligently took his time and used it until his very last few minutes. In short, I lost. Now, were in big trouble, 1 - 2. I told Superpeon he had to win for us tie and to qualify. Primates of the Caribbean already won their match point because the first, second and fourth boards won thier games 3 - 0. The tiebreaks is game points and it was very close, ZWISHENZUGS 15 - Primates of the Caribbean 14.5, and with one game left in both teams. Superpeon played some great strategy in the opening. He also played an epic tactic in the middlegame. He won his game and reserved our team a spot in the section's knockout playoffs.