The New Jersey Knockouts and the Boston Blitz meet tonight in US Chess League action with important playoff implications. If New Jersey can pull out a win or draw, they will have a very good chance of making the playoffs, despite their ups and downs this season. If Boston wins, they are guaranteed a playoff berth.
I thought it would be interesting to preview the action by looking at a couple of games from the past which suggest that this could be a very tight contest, despite the two teams' recent records.
Here are the match-ups:
- GM Joel Benjamin (2653) - GM Larry Christiansen (2663)
- IM Dean Ippolito (2447) - SM Jorge Sammour-Hasbun (2558)
- NM Evan Ju (2268) - NM Denys Shmelov (2251)
- NM Victor Shen (2218) - NM Chris Williams (2175)
GMs Benjamin and Christiansen
have met many times before, of course, including in a critical
US Championship match in 1997, from which I take the
main game in my preview. They have played many interesting games over the years, including a fascinating game in the
Kevitz Variation in the 2000 US Championship in Seattle which was
nicely annotated online at TWIC by John Henderson. I expect this to be a very tough slug-fest. Though they were major rivals about a decade ago, they do not seem to have played each other recently. But
one of Benjamin's Anti-Sicilians articles may offer a preview to the opening we might see....
Sammour-Hasbun and Ippolito have only one match-up in the databases, where Ippolito played the opening poorly and then struggled to hold on in a complex double-rook ending. I imagine his opening preparation will be a little better this time, and I think the games on every board could go either way.
Follow the action on
ICC or with the
NJKO's "Real Time Blog" of the match. Other good sources include the
Boston Blitz Blog, the
BCC Weblog,
US Chess League, and
USCF.
No comments:
Post a Comment