In the tournament Skånska Skolmästerskapet we got a fantastic result with two 1st prizes and also 3rd, 4th and 7th (?, not sure about Carl’s final position but for sure it was top 10) place for our competitors. Guanbo won the youngest group with 20 out of maximum 21 points over the 7 rounds (3-2-1 score) whereas Oscar scored 5 out 5 in the ”Kadett” group to win. And in the youngest group as well Qianqian finished 3rd with (if I remember correctly) 18 points, Jakob 4th with 16 and Carl also top 10 with 15 points. All very good results!

In the youngest group it was an early internal meeting between Qianqian and Jakob in the first round. As it is not common for the youngest group to have children using the full time allocated, it caused some stress to the arbiter in the group regarding the time allocation for the tournament when Qianqian and Jakob played it out in a rook + pawn ending where Qianqian had the edge but Jakob defended well and as Qianqians time ran out the only pieces left on the board was the two kings plus a pawn for Qianqian. As you know this means a draw…
After this interesting start there followed a few additional ”internal” club meetings in the remaining rounds, if I am not mistaken (I do not have the full lists) Qianqian played against all three club mates…
I could not watch all the games as I had a group of my own to attend to, but an interesting game I followed a bit was the game between Guanbo and Qianqian. After an early pawn win by Qianqian the game was even until Qianqian managed to win a knight from Guanbo resulting in an endgame with rook, knight and egual pawns. Guanbo managed to battle it out to a finish with only the knight for Qianqian versus two pawns for Guanbo which neither side could win and so a draw, the only point loss for Guanbo during the tournament in a well played game by both players. Guanbo also showed strength in the game against the second-placed Qianru from Lunds ASK, converting a difficult position held down by a difficult pin to a win securing the win by a knight fork winning a full rook, Guanbo safely won the rest of the games so to give a clear tournament win.
Jakob played well throughout the tournament and is (like all our players) steadily improving his playing strength. After the first round against Qianqian there followed some safe wins (one of them using a trick we talked about in our practices to open up the h-file by sacrificing a knight to get an open h-file for queen and rook to deliver checkmate), a loss against Guanbo who won a piece quite early in that game and only a loss against the final 2nd-placed Qianru stopped Jakob from reaching the top-3 this time.
Carl also played well, he was always close to the very top tables after a good start. Even with the loss against his club mate he managed to get back and more so with a loss in the 6th round in an even game against a player from En Passant he managed to win the last game in a good game securing the win by nice play giving a place in the top 10 and a prize, making the day a complete success for the club 🙂
Oscar started in the top tables and remained there for the whole tournament, defeating his main competitors one by one. In the first game he was a little bit lucky to escape with a win since the opponent could have played a stalemate trick but failed to spot that so Oscar could convert the position to a win. The rest of the games he won by sound play in his games, utilizing the chances he got while keeping down the opponents chances of counterplay to give 5 consecutive wins.

All in all a good day for the club with happy players (I believe), parents and for sure a happy coach 🙂

BR
/Claes