Tennessee - Seattle

Whoa! That was a match. I think my comments about ratings not being a big factor and playing with motivation being a bit more of a factor. The match with Tennessee showed it.

First off, I want to describe "Slugger-vision". At about the 90 minute mark I stopped skipping between games and put all for of them up at the same time. This was really cool, all the white clocks ticking, all the Sluggers clocks ticking, all the black players clocks running, all the Sluggers clocks running, multiple moves all at once drawing my eyes to and fro. Really kind of fun. Oh, did I mention the Sluggers clocks running? Serper was the first one into the time abyss, he had only 17 minutes left after about 12 moves. The Slava kind of wandered into the shortage of time followed by Lee. It was a bit unnerving when all their clocks were going and it didn't look like any moves were on tap. Just too crazy.

Serper played the Sicilian, sac'd a b-pawn for 2 B's, 2 center pawns and 3 open Q side files. Andrews put up some resistence, but once the B's started humming it was too difficult for White. Lee's game was quite interesting. Wheeler defended the English opening with the English defense 1...b6 and had the opportunity to play Bxf3 in the opening when it would leave White with doubled f pawns and d4 weak. I think this might have been a better choice than going into the Hedgehog, as Lee marshaled his forces very accurately, snatched the b6 pawn and was able to navigate some tactics to get to the winning ending. Readey played the Black side of the Samisch Kings Indian and just got squeezed. Mihkailuk - Bereolos was the most fascinating game as a cat and mouse affair turned into a duel of weak pawns, white's on b6 and black's on c5. Slava seemed to get the kind of thing he wanted, but short of time made a dangerous decision to avoid a Queen exchange. Bereolos was able to swing his forces over to the f file and get a winning attack. So, 2-2 tie. Better than a loss, but still not a win. The Sluggers seem to be kind of a hit and miss bunch, when they go strong they play as well as any team and when they are off almost anything can happen.

Ok, until next itme.