After getting to bed at about 1 a.m. Sunday morning, and waking up at 8, I was very tired.
In my fourth game, I was playing Kenneth Tack. This man had only played in 2 tournaments before, and only had a rating of about 1475. Ken was a very strong player though, and beat me in an interesting Knight and pawn engame using a nice forking tactic either winning my knight or promoting his pawn. Unfortunately, I don't have the game because I left it at our hotel... After the game, we went over it and saw where I went wrong. About Ken, he ended up in a 3 way tie for first in our "C" Section, and boosted his rating to 1700! Congradulations Ken, and thank you for a good game!
In the final round, I was white playing against a girl from ann arbor named Joy Chen. This girl was 11, just like me. It was very fun to play against a person my age and skill level. In this game, I got very lucky, and got a great attack right after the opening that she was unable to stop, unfortunately.
Joshua Posthuma (1517) vs. Joy Chen (1475)
1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bb7 So Joy is a King's Indian player... 4.e4 d6 5.Nf3 0-0 6.h3 King's indian Makagonov. 6. ...Re8 7.Bd3 e6? Immediately when she picked up her E pawn, I thought she was playing e5, which makes more sense. This move is still fine if she plans on fianchettoing her light bishop. 8.Be3 Nc6 9.0-0 Bd7!? 10.Qd2 Rf8? She wasted a move moving the rook from f8 to e8, and then back to f8 again. What is her goal with this move? f5 is what I see. 11.Bh6 Ne8 12.Bxg7 Nxg7? This is a defensive mistake. This allows a good move on my part. Better would be Kxg7, defending the h6 square. 13.Qh6! This threatens Ng5 the next move and h7 cannot be guarded, and that would end in mate. She chooses the only defense. 13. ...Nh5 14.Ng5 Nf6 15.f4 preparing e5. 15. ...Re8. hehe and back to e8 it goes! =D This prevents checkmate on h7 after the knight is taken. 16.e5 breaking through... 16. ...Nxd4 Grabbing a pawn while he waits for white's next move. 17.exf6 Qxf6 18.Qxh7+ Kf8 19.Nce4 Bringing yet another piece into the attack! 19. ...Qg7 Black's bes move. I came to a big decision now. It would help me alot to just trade queens and try to win the game up a knight for a pawn, but I didn't know if I could continue the attack with Qh4, and try to still pull something out of it. I didn't want to pass an opportunity to trade queens, but I also wanted to go through with the attack, which I couldn't do without my queen. In the end, I decided to try to continue the attack, and to see if his queen was enough defense or not. 20.Qh4! Nf5 Black attacks my queen, trying to fight it back to the second rank and stop my attack. Luckily, I had seen how to come through with the attack after Nf5, and still win with my queen still on h4. My two knights proved very helpful in launching this attack. 21.Nh7+ Kg8 22.Nef6+ Kh8 23.Bxf5 exf5 And now, with a discovery lined up on the H file, I can finish it off.
White to move and mate in 2.
24.Ng5+ (Nf8+) 24. ...Qh6 25.Qxh6#
1-0
So overall, the tournament went very well for me. I got a total of 3.5/5, and boosted my rating up to 1571. 29 small points to B class!
Also, congradulations to Andrew Schremser from our Holland Chess Club who played in the E class championships, and tied for first with Rachael Tao. They both got 4/5. Andrew got $120 and a large trophy. Good job!
So that is how my tournament went at the Michigan Master Expert and Class Championship. Bye for right now!
-Joshua Posthuma
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