Alright, everyone! Welcome back to The ICA Show; I am Alan, your host, and I am joined by Luke, your cohost. Luke, how are you doing today?
Every Sunday at 8pm, ICA Students and chess fans tune in to watch the livestream. The theme for each week is different: two weeks ago, ICA Students played against Frisch High School in a blitz tournament. One week ago, Thomas Holder and David Milstein led an analysis from David’s match at K-12 Nationals. The following day, Alan and Elshan reacted to said analysis. This week was a “Guess the ELO” Challenge, where viewers had to guess ratings. From the most recent Dr. Ostfeld Memorial ICA Championships, held April 21st, five matches were submitted for the show. The catch: Luke and I only had five minutes to analyze each match!
The appetizer to the show, this match featured two unrated players from our newly formed Section 3: ALL AGES. Throughout our analysis, although we were harsh on the players, one person guessed Abraham’s rating to be 1453: above mine! Despite several mistakes, Abraham was able to expose Daniel’s poorly placed king to win a rook. He then used his powerful knights to clear the board, before delivering a checkmate.
We now introduce Holly, ICA’s newest TD! But, for this tournament, Holly decided to play; directing can come later. The first seven moves of the match were complete prep. This would not last very long, however. 8. d5, meant the position was thrown in the balance. Anderson could have used this opportunity to gain, not needing to run away to a5 with the night. This, however, was not the focus of Luke’s analysis. Instead, 10. d6, a blunder by Holly which was not capitalized by Anderson, baffled our cohost! By not finding the correct capture, Holly was allowed to utilize the open file and her strong nights to deliver a swift checkmate!
As for guesses: Luke was almost spot on, while our viewers all guessed within the margin of error.
All credit in this match goes to Ding for convincing Luke to guess his rating at around 1500 and Bryan’s at around 1350: the exact opposite of reality! After a cagey opening where the queens and two minor pieces were traded off, Ding, with Bryan’s help, used this opportunity to close the position entirely, forcing a draw. Luke and I concurred, however, that Ding did not need to end the match where it ended, as his knights are much stronger than Bryan’s minor pieces. Most of our players guessed Ding’s rating within a margin of error. Unfortunately, everyone put Bryan’s rating as lower than 1500.
It is cruel and unfair to have viewers guess Yefim Treger’s rating if they do not know Yefim Treger played a match. Reason being, Yefim is known for his odd opening play: if a beginner student was to play 2. Ne2 after 1. e4, I would not let the student get away with it as their coach. But Yefim’s goal is to put the opponent, and, clearly, viewers of The ICA Show as well, out of prep. Regardless, it was clear by move 10 that Yefim had the initiative. Not only did he have one extra piece developed, but he had clear control of the center. By the end, Yefim had way too many pieces in the attack that he could sacrifice a bishop and queen to force checkmate!
As for Harlan, although he is a very good player, it is impossible to guess his rating without any sort of context. Interestingly enough, over half of our viewers guessed Yefim’s rating to be under 1600! To those people, I now give an intermission and allow you to view Yefim’s analysis of the match.
Even though I performed very badly in a recent Ostfeld memorial tournament, there was a game which I think everybody will love it. A main reason is that in this game a checkmate could happen in the opening what is very rare. To illustrate this let’s continue to use an idea of the pattern recognition (the first one was from the post January 6, 2024). The pattern recognition given in all three positions in the picture is called “checkmate by the rook and bishop”. Two left positions are solved by a queen sacrifice on e8d8 to start combined actions of the bishop and rook. The right position had occurred in my second game of the Ostfeld Memorial tournament with Harlan, who was Black. He had just played Ne7-g6 creating all necessary conditions for executing a checkmate with the pattern just discussed. Other details of my game with Harlan are given in the comments below.
We finish the report from a match which was actually not played at our recent tournament. Rather this match was played at a Glen Rock Quads event. However, we gladly let it slide. A key moment in the analysis came when I miscalculated a tactic on move 20. I thought 20. … Nxd2 rather than Nxc2 would win the Bishop on c2. However, Luke caught me by stating Black would first take the bishop on h7 with a check. Although black had a better position, 24. … Rxb5 allowed for beautiful tactical play for Neil. 25. Nf6+! allowed for white to open up the black king and deliver an inevitable checkmate.
And this brilliant play meant almost everyone put Neil’s rating as much higher than his 878. To put it one way, if our viewers were correct, Neil would be higher rated than Yefim Treger!
At the conclusion of the show, the results were revealed, with both our viewer base and Luke in complete shock at some of the ratings. Jack Holder was our winner of the event, meaning he won free entry to our next Dr. Ostfeld tournament, on June 9th!
We hope to see everyone at that event, and on our shows, which are held Sundays at 8pm Eastern Time!
Game 1: Abraham Eisenman (0) vs Daniel Okereke (0)
Game 2: Holly Kolvenbach (1481) vs Anderson Schafer (1154)
Game 3: Ding Liu (1301) vs Bryan Andrei (1529)
Game 4: Yefim Treger (2101) vs Harlan Kim (1761)
Game 5: Neil Gupta (878) vs Michael Domanski (777)
Results
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