Mike Shpan Memorial TNT - Round 3

I'm very reluctant to step on the toes or duplicate the efforts of Alex, Tony and others who do such a fine job with the MCA webpage and the Chess in Manitoba blog. However, a few remarks about last night's results for those who weren't there might be interesting and useful.

Jordan and I both won our games. Mine was an English (as usual) that transposed into a kind of Slav Defence line with both e-pawns removed. I wound up with an isolated queen pawn (IQP) and a timely 16. d5! bust up Gary Crawford's position. However, I very nearly got into extreme time trouble later on as Gary fought like a tiger to defend his position even though he was down a rook. Eventually, I was able to bring the win home by forcing a trade of Gary's last rook and he tipped his king over as I was down to my last 15 minutes on the clock.

I have yet to figure out how to make a game viewer work on this blog but I am trying. In the meantime, all I can do is post remarks and static positions from various games. Here is the position from my game as noted above:



White played 16. d5! and Black is in trouble. There then followed 16...c5 17. Nb5 Qb8 and then 18. Bf4 is just a red hot poker in the eye. As I noted above, Gary fought like a tiger in the endgame and make me work hard for the victory.

Jordan played a Kalashnikov Variation in the Sicilian against Daniel Oberton who grabbed an h-pawn with his king bishop and found himself facing a ferocious king-side attack. Jordan played 29...fxg3 (e.p.) and White resigned as the attack on the bishop and on h2 is too much to defend against. It looked like an uncommon finish for a Sicilian Defence with a king-side attack for Black. However, it is difficult to see where White went wrong. Jordan will have some analysis to follow.



Black played 29... fxg3 (e.p.) and White resigns.

In other games, newcomer Simon Fromme held Waldemar Schulz to a draw in an exciting battle. Dezheng "King" Kong flagged against Les Mundwiler. Les is now leading the MSM tournament with 3 points in 3 rounds followed by Simon, Waldemar and Harley Greenberg, who drew with Jim Green, at 2.5 points. Myron Kernetsky chalked up his first win in competitive chess after a 17 year absence by defeating John Wierda. Congratulations, Myron!

Myron Kernetsky was the host, for 13 years, of a public access TV show called The World of Chess. Myron tells us that as far as he knows the shows have not been preserved. Here is a question for readers of Exclam! online; are there any surviving copies of Myron's show out there? Contributions on this matter are welcome.

The results of all the games from the Shpan Memorial are now up on the MCA website. The games should be posted in the next day or so. I am in the habit of e mailing my games to Alex Nikouline to make the task of volunteers like Alex and Tony Boron easier. Other players do this as well and all this activity of recording and preserving the results and games enriches the loamy soil of Manitoba chess and keeps alive the spirit of that magazine whose first editor was Manfred Schulz.