Welcome to another week of live coverage of the Tennessee Tempo. This week the Tempo have another tough opponent, the defending league Champions, the San Francisco Mechanics.
The Mechanics are off to a slow start in defense of their title at 2-2, 4th place in the (South)Western Division. Some near misses have left the Tempo at 0.5-3.5, 6th in the division.
This is the third meeting between the Tempo and the Mechanics. They beat us twice last year in their Championship season, 3-1 and 3.5-0.5. In both cases I think the score was pretty reflective of what went on in the match, which was somewhat unusual for us.
It's a somewhat later start than usual this week on account of playing a team from the West coast. The Tempo is going with the same lineup as last week: Burnett, Andrews, Wheeler, and Wu.
It looks like all the games have started without a hitch. Ron has White on Board 1 versus GM Patrick Wolff. Wolff is a contemporary of Ron and myself, two years younger than me, and one year younger than Ron. Unfortunately, like many of the strong players of our generation he is semi-retired from chess. As far as I can tell, this season's USCL is the first competetive chess his has played since 2001. So far, their Rauzer Sicilian looks fairly normal.
Todd has Black on Board 2 versus the Mechanics' team captain IM John Donaldson. John is the only player in the San Francisco lineup that I have played over the board. He beat me in the Midwest Masters Invitational in both 1988 and 2002. The latter game featured the Maroczy Bind which is also happening in Todd's game, but against me, Donaldson opted for a setup with a kingside fianchetto.
Jerry is facing one of the Mechanics' young stars, 16-year-old Sam Shankland, with White on Board 3. How deep are the Mechanics? Last year Shankland made the all-star team, this year he is not even on their main roster!
Board 4 is the super juniors battle with James taking the Black pieces against the #1 11-year old in the country Daniel Naroditsky. The combined 23 years of age of the two players on this board is less than that of every other player in the match except Shankland. James played an early ...Nd4 in the Closed Sicilian. I didn't think that was normal as early as he played it. I'm not sure if that was preparation or if he just goofed up the move order, we will have to see.
It looks like San Francisco won the opening battle on Board 2. One of the spectators said that 17. e5 was in the book that Donaldson wrote on the Accelerated Dragon. Todd had been playing the opening very rapidly, but sunk about 20 minutes into 17...Rfd8. That looks pretty ugly to me, d6 is a serious weakness now. This seems like the kind of position Donaldson eats up.
Sorry for the lack of updates, I've been engaged in a rather futile attempt to convince Brian McCarthy that Spassky used the Closed Sicilian (Board 4) as more than just a "surprise" weapon. Spassky visited the Mechanics Institute during last season's USCL. That had to be a great experience especially for the young players.
Despite the early ...Nd4 getting kicked back by c3, it seems that James has a pretty solid position. Ron's game hasn't progressed very far, they've only made 12 moves. 12. Qd2 was somewhat unusual. Jerry's game has a symmetrical pawn structure, but there is still quite a bit of life in the position.
There was a short tactical sequence in Jerry's game that saddled him with split pawns on the queenside. A lot of pieces got traded and I can't see that there should be much trouble for either side here.
Jerry offered a draw, but his opponent is playing on for the moment. James' game is looking pretty double edged. He has pushed up the pawns in front of his king. Todd is fighting to find some active play, at least the White c4 pawn looks a little tender. Ron sacrificed a pawn for a kingside attack. I don't see that he has a whole lot, but it may be one of those slow builds where the pieces keep coming into the attack.
James' position looks very shaky on 4. The lineup of Re1 vs. Qe8 seems like it is going to be a disaster for Black.
Todd managed to swap some pieces, but 26. Na4 was a nice move by Donaldson trading knight for bishop. It looks like White has all the trumps in this ending: B vs. N., Black's passed d-pawn isn't going anywhere, while White's b-pawn can become dangerous, and the Black kingside pawns are all on the same color as White's bishop. Todd will have to defend very carefully to hold this.
Things are looking a bit dark for the Tempo. James' is offering a queen sacrifice. Jerry's position still looks about level, but he is 40 minutes behind on the clock. Todd is trying to defend an inferior ending. I still don't see real compensation for Ron's pawn.
Jerry went down. It's SF 1 - TN 0. With the clock running down he tried to play actively (possibly influenced by the situation on the other boards), but it just created too many weaknesses. Very solid game by Shankland.
Ron's game is looking more interesting. He has sacrificed a piece, but now the fuel is starting to come to the fire.
The Black queen has dropped off on two boards now. James is fighting on valiantly on Board 4. Ron has won a GM's queen for the second week in a row. Let's hope this one turns out better than last week.
James' pawns are starting to drop off and Donaldson has the b-pawn rolling against Todd. It looks like Ron is our only hope to score in this match, but Wolff looks to have much more compensation for his queen than Becerra had last week. Ron has to be very careful of the dark-squared bishop making it to the long diagonal.
This match has seemed to go by very quickly, so before time runs out, I have to once again give a big thanks to the league's primary sponsor PokerStars, Find the Poker Star in You! Also, I've been neglecting to mention the folks at the ICC. Without the ICC the distances between cities would make the USCL pretty infeasible in the United States.
James resigned, so we're down 2-0 now. Todd's situation hasn't improved much, but at least Donaldson is below 10 minutes now. Ron and Wolff are both less than 5 minutes now, so I guess things might start going crazy soon.
Ron's game is pretty chaotic now. Both players under 2 minutes. It looked like Wolff missed a chance to pick up a clean piece with 30...Rb1+. Now, who knows what is going on. Todd is still trying to dig in, but our chances for a draw in this match are still on life support.
Ron's queen got caught in the crossfire of Wolff's bishops. Down 3-0 now. Todd still fighting the uphill battle.
Todd went down, too. A 4-0 shellacking by what is pretty far from what in my opinion is not the Mechanics strongest lineup. Obviously, we have to figure out what went wrong here as this was the least competitive we've been the entire season.
Next week, the first ever meeting between the Tempo and the Baltimore Kingfishers. Good night.