It’s tough having a perfect won-loss record; the pressure to keep winning and stay perfect is overwhelming. Going into last night the Arizona Scorpions were the only USCL team in that highly fraught position, but thanks to the Chicago Blaze, who handed them their first defeat of the 2010 season, the Scorpions have now been relieved of that particular burden.
We will forgive them, of course, if they don’t thank us.
It was an unexpected loss for Arizona, their first ever against the Blaze in five lifetime meetings. The score was 2.5-1.5, the Blaze edge coming on victories by GM Dmitry Gurevich and NM Eric Rosen and a critical draw on Board 2 by IM Florin Felecan. These were all exciting games. Florin’s ended uncommonly early. Dmitry has annotated his game here, and we expect to have an analysis of Eric’s game in due course. Check back later. (Update: It's here.)
The only bright spot for the Scorpions was a victory by IM Daniel Rensch over IM Angelo Young, which came at the end of the night and had no impact on the outcome of the match. The game was looking highly drawish, and with the match result no longer in doubt, I can only guess that Angelo took a chance on a breakout maneuver that might have allowed him to promote a pawn, but it gave Daniel an opening to mate him. Angelo doesn't lose these games when the match is on the line.
At the halfway mark in the regular season, the Blaze are off to the best start in our history, with a record of 3.5-1.5 after five weeks. We’re in third place in the eight-team Western Division, behind two teams we have now beaten. The San Francisco Mechanics must win Wednesday night to stay ahead of us in the standings. Our playoff prospects have never been better, and we're getting a kind of respect around the league we've never had before. It feels good.
Thanks a million to Betsy Dynako for stepping in last night to serve as Celebrity Tournament Director at the last minute. Thanks also to NM Len Weber for providing transportation to our Celebrity TD, also at the last minute. Next week we sojourn to the East Coast (virtually speaking, that is) for a cross-divisional match against the Philadelphia Inventors. This will be another Monday-night event, so mark your calendar and plan to join us either on ICC or in person at the North Shore Chess Center. More on next week’s match to come.
And, as always, Go Blaze!
Photos: Daniel Parmet, Andi Rosen, Len Weber
Please note (09/21): The photo slide show above isn't finished. Please come back later for more fab pix. Maybe captions, too. If you're good, which you usually are.
