MMM, U12 and club festival
In the MMM on Friday there was a bit of everything with three teams. For the First a runaway win against Schwabing Nord2, for the Second a 3-3 against Bayern7, and for the Fourth a harsh defeat in Vaterstetten. Forstenried2 didn’t show up against our Third on Thursday. Teams 1 and 2 thus kept their promotion chances alive. The Second has only one more round to play on 3 June. For the First, the trips on the 3rd to Südost and at the end of June to Kirchseeon lie ahead.
On Saturday it was the U12 team’s turn. Although we have a free place, we wanted to achieve qualification on our own merits. Zugzwang was the host. We fielded Tugrul on board one. He had already scored the point on Friday evening against Schwabing Nord2 on board eight. On board two played Vedarth, whom I picked up, on board three mistakenly Saksham and on board four Smrthi. I had swapped the last two; there is no big difference in playing strength, the record between the two is balanced, Smrithi has the slightly higher Lichess rapid rating. In any case, Saksham was hopelessly inferior to the Zugzwang player Mete, who was two years older and best-rated at around 1420 DWZ, and lost his queen already in the early phase. Smrithi’s game was balanced; a blunder by her opponent gave her the win via a discovered attack, which counts for the DWZ rating but was scored as a forfeit loss for the team. Tugrul decided the point for himself in an exciting game against Emir. He had to prove that he masters checkmating with queen against rook. Emir was in time trouble, and through his persistence he made Tugrul call upon his twin sister to keep the score notation. Hats off for the chess show; about 10 people were gathered around the board. In the next round, Garching’s second board was missing. This time our line-up was correct, Tugce slid into the team for Saksham, but unfortunately was left without an opponent. Smrithi drew in a game similar to the first and defended a seemingly hopeless position against her opponent’s far-advanced connected passed pawns, which she successfully neutralised with king and rook. Vedarth defeated his opponent in a game dominated by tactics, and Tugrul, with his last bit of strength, scored the point against Daniel for the second time. So within 24 hours he gathered three points for the club and a number of DWZ points for himself. Congratulations on that! We thus qualified, since we finished second. On 25 June we are to hold the semi-final. The Jugendtreff Au is already booked!
On Sunday, in the most beautiful weather, we celebrated our recent successes with rapid and blitz tournaments. From 12 o’clock there were mainly children from the chess clubs at schools, and from 2 p.m. our club players arrived. We were especially pleased about Varvara, who came to Munich with her family from Kiev. She effortlessly racks up over 40 in the Puzzle Race and has a tactics rating of over 2000. She is therefore considered a great talent. Her first real tournament will be the Ergolding Rapid Chess Open.