So wins Quebec Open; Bruzon clear second
SPRAGGETT ON CHESS
Close to 300 participants! This year’s COQ was also clearly the best run OPEN tournament of the summer in Canada, with live games readily available on the internet and the pgn scores following shortly afterwards, thanks to Hugh Brodie. The top section was won by Filipino grandmaster So, with 7.5 points from 9, taking home 4,000 dollars for his efforts. Close behind (at 7.0 points) was Cuba’s Bruzon, earning himself 2,000 dollars. Sumets finished clear third with 6.5 points.
Panjwani (left, bottom) playing Bruzon in round 1. Beside Bruzon is So.
Anton Kovalyov won the top Quebecer prize of 1,500 dollars, with 5.5 points. Many of Canada’s top young masters took part, with excellent showings by Panjwani , Gerzhoy and Thavandiran, also with 5.5 points each.
You can not put on a consistently well run event without a professional team, corporate sponsorship and skilled-volunteer help from the chess community. After the relatively amateurish efforts earlier this summer of the Canadian Open (Victoria)–which did not have a single Canadian grandmaster participate (there are 8 grandmasters in Canada last time I looked) and the Toronto International –which was a nightmare trying to find games–the Quebec Open comes as a pleasant experience. The website was easy to navigate and , as written earlier, following the games and downloading the pgn scores was excellent. Hats off to the organizers!
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There were many very interesting games played in this year’s Open and in coming weeks I might analyze one or two here on this blog. The game below is a cute miniature won by Canadian Open Champion Eric Hansen against a promising master,Louie Jiang.
POSITION AFTER 16 MOVES:
Jiang,Louie
im Hansen,Eric
Black has played a dubious opening line in the hope of catching Eric out of his usually well worked out preparation. It back-fired, as the Black King is an obvious target, especially with most of Black’s pieces as yet undeveloped.
HOWEVER, for the past few moves Louie has been trying to entice a sacrifice on g6, which up to now would have been unsound. HOWEVER, things are now different…
17.Bxg6!
A well calculated combination with a really nice scorpion sting at the end, as we shall see…
Obviously Black can not take the gift, but he had counted on having a subtle defence…
17…Qb4-ch! 18.Kf1 Qg4!
It looks like Eric will have no choice but to exchange Queens, with reasonable prospects in the ending.
19.Bh7-ch!!
A fatal scorpion sting that Eric had prepared.
1-0
It is a forced mate: 19…KxB 20.Qh6-ch and 21.Bg5!