Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Surprising Start to U.S. Junior Championship


I had figured the U.S. Junior Closed Championship would be a cakewalk for GM Ray Robson, with only IM Sam Shankland (playing in one of his last tournaments) to challenge him.  But Shankland has dropped to the bottom of the table while Robson just narrowly saved a lost game in Round One against the ever-dangerous NM Eric Rosen (see diagram).  
Rosen - Robson, US Junior 2010
White to play and win most 
decisively after 39...Kh6
See my notes to the game Rosen - Robson, US Junior Closed 2010 for the solution and more details.  


Rosen lost his Round Four game to tournament leader Parker Zhao (see "Zhao Leads Junior Closed..." at US Chess Online) while Shankland and Robson drew their game.  I look forward to more interesting play today.
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2 comments:

katar said...

Tragic for Rosen. It's quite easy as a puzzle, since you immediately notice the crushing effect of Qf4+ and then find a simple way to deflect Black's queen away from the c1-h6 diagonal (while avoiding Qh2#). But in context of the game, the mate after Qf4 is almost an accident-- white just won a rook and black has mate-in-1, so the natural move is to swap queens without looking further. Too bad. That's interesting news re Sam Shankland.

Wed Jul 14, 10:36:00 AM EDT
Michael Goeller said...

I think time pressure had something to do with it. Thanks for the comments.

Wed Jul 14, 08:11:00 PM EDT

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