What a rush that was! I am waiting for the 10:55pm ferry about an hour after the match reached its "just" result, but the adrenalin is still affecting me like a triple shot iced venti latte on a hot summer day. The weather seems to be back to the "6 month cloud cover over Seattle winter", but the Sluggers are still summer heat wave hot!!

After Michael Lee won his match time pressure happened. BIGTIME major time scramble for all the Sluggers. At one point Serper had under a minute, when Tangborn had about 2 minutes and Slava had less than 3 minutes. Their opponents all had double digit minutes, which is the equivalent to forever. If we were going to win the match, we couldn't make any time scrambled games, at least not for our side.

The local experts and masters all were there. At least it seemed like everybody was there, Geoff, Ignacio, Collyer, Salmon and many more. If Orlov were here, we could hold the state championship right there! I estimate that there was over 30,000 rating points all clustered in and around the three remaining boards. If the ICC clocks ticked, that and the sound it makes when a move is made would have been the only sounds in the room. The tension was so thick, it felt like we were all encased in very clear plexiglass. People could hardly move and the time disadvantage was so big, it looked like a disaster waiting to happen.

If you were there, you know what I mean. It seemed that there was no way we could win this match and we could easily lose it. Eric was battling valiantly, but being a pawn down is hard to defend against an IM, when as compensation you have less active pieces. Oh, and his opponent had 30 minutes or something crazy like that and Eric had been down to under 3 minutes since the early middlegame, so time pressure was just a permanent state he was in. I was amazed that he was hanging in there and making it really hard for his opponent to break through. Maybe he could get a miracle draw, but sure can't count on it, so the match was essentially tied 1-1, even though it wasn't official yet. Now, Serper's tenuous advantage had been nurtured all the way to a rook and pawn endgame, but nothing tangible, then a king + 3 pawns vs king + 3 pawns endgame. Both sides with the f, g and h pawns and Serper's only advantage was that he had a pawn on h4 and a slightly better king position due to temporarily achieving an outside passed pawn, vs. what turned out to be a weak isolated pawn that was traded off for Serper's b pawn. Now I know GM's are really good at endgames, but I was pleasantly surprised when they kept playing. After all, there was no way Serper could lose this, was there? Whoa! He sacs one third of all his material for a tempo. OK, so it was only a pawn, but when you have only three pawns left, that is one third of your material. I still didn't see how he would win this (the story of this game it seems), but he was finally able to convert his "temporary" advantage that he had from the opening into an extra pawn! Alas, it was the h pawn and his opponent is a GM, who as I predicted played very accurately today and didn't lose his queen, or even a pawn. The game went down to K + h pawn vs K on f file, leading to the classic stalemate. You can't say we didn't try to win that one, but I was hoping for 1 point from the top 2 boards and for that to happen, Eric would now need to draw. Serper winning and Eric losing was the way I had thought we could get a point, two draws was possible, but unlikely.

The difference on board 2 is that Eric's opponent had an extra pawn and Eric didn't really have any compensation for it, so even though it got down to a R and pawn endgame with pawns on the same side, the king position was way in white's favor and after putting up a tremendous resistance, Eric finally has to resign the position as the extra pawn is going to cost him his rook. Ouch. I didn't think we were going to win this match by getting 3 draws on top of Michael's win...

In addition to all the spectators, the last game had two more very anxious spectators as the entire match was riding on Slava's game and Serper and Tangborn silently cheered him on. Slava hasn't played in a few months, and one sign of rust is getting into time pressure. Granted, he got into the time pressure spending so much time looking for a win, but still time pressure is time pressure regardless of how you got there. At essentially 30 seconds a move, it is impossible for people to play flawless chess, especially in a dynamic endgame. Unlike in Eric's game, Slava got a lot of piece activity as compensation and it seemed to be significantly more than a pawn's worth of compensation. In fact, it looks like he could just win it back and still have better pieces, but of course that is more conducive to drawing than to winning and we like to win here in Seattle :)

Instead of the pawn, he starts putting the heat wave on the black king, but with only a rook and knight left, it will be hard to actually get a checkmate. Hey, then again, maybe not. Could it be a forced mate with Nf8 and Rh7 being unstoppable? With black's king totally hemmed in with an earlier h4 move reminiscent of Georgi's h4 from last week, there definitely seemed to be some checkmate threats. Ah, but Rb7 would defend and get Slava's rook off the seventh rank. Ng5!? These are the moves that I don't instantly see, you know, the ones where you put a piece on a square that is attacked by a pawn. Of course, it is immune as taking it would lead to a mate, but black plays Rb7 anyway and now Slava has to trade off his really powerful N for black's pathetic bishop on a8 :(. After the game, it seemed that Nd8 would just dominate black's bishop and lead to a clean win, but all he has to do now is recapture the pawn on g5 with his f-pawn and march his king and pac-man the enemy pawns. Hmmmmm..... he recaptured with the h-pawn. Looks strange, there must be a good reason. I hope.

Indeed there was a good reason, Slava's clock was getting down to single digits. Single digit seconds! Yikes. He has his eyes closed? I know strong players like to analyze in their head, but geesh, with 12, 11, 10, 9, seconds left?? It got so close, on one move, he made the move with 4 seconds left, but the board didn't pick it up because it was a bit too off center. Good thing he noticed immediately and adjusted the rook and wow, he was down to 2 seconds. We just came within 2 seconds of losing the match. Granted, the rook and pawn endgame is all Slava's to win, but it had the smell of those rook and pawn endgames that support the myth that all rook and pawn endgames are drawn.

So, they keep trading off pawns and are down to 2 pawns for Slava and one for his opponent, but it's one of those positions where the rook is protecting the pawn and preventing the enemy pawn from queening and since it can't do both, what usually happens is that one side takes the others pawn, leaving his pawn unprotected and subject to capture. Very unlike Eric's game, the resulting R+P vs. R endgame was where black had almost ideal defensive position. Sure looks like a draw and our win streak will come to an end. Might as well play it out though, you never know what could happen, but with Slava' opponent still having over 5 minutes and the relatively simple position, well it's not like a master is going to blunder in a position like that. Then again, last week, wasn't it Dallas's board 1 that miscalculated in a relatively simple endgame. A bit more complicated than this, but nah, no way that could happen here.

Sure enough, after Slava pushes his pawn to the seventh rank, it gets taken by the rook. What? It was supposed to be the pawn that gets pushed, rook takes pawn leaving the pawn unprotected and then rook takes pawn. OK, I must be missing something. Ah, of course, its the old, rook can't stop a passed pawn from an adjacent file trick! If Slava takes the pawn, then black's pawn can't be stopped and it queens. At that point, with one pawn each, it was most definitely a draw and its one of those positions where I could certainly lose either side :)

Maybe, defending it will be a bit tricky? Slava is sure spending a lot of time on this move, not that he has much more than 30 seconds left. Wait, it looks like he is thinking of taking the pawn. He starts to make the move, no, stop. Surely he must see that the pawn is poisoned, even I can see that, has time pressure melted his brain. Hmmmm... Wait a second, its true that if Slava takes the pawn black gets a queen, but he can make an in between move that threatens mate. Actually not mate, but it would force the newly minted queen to interpose and die the next move, leaving Slava with a K + P endgame that even I could win, in a game of speed chess!

(Mikhailuk - Zaremba): black to move after 78.g7
Zaremba could draw pretty easily with f2, eventually trading
the f pawn for the g pawn and forcing a drawn match.
However in a moment of insanity, Zaremba played 78...Rxg7??
allowing 79. Rxg7 f2 80.Ke6 and black resigned as after 80...f1=Q
81. Rf8+ Qf8 82. Rxf8 Kxf8 83. Kd6 and white has an easily winning
king and pawn ending.  This untimely blunder gave Seattle the
match by the score of 2.5-1.5.

Huh?? I must be too wired, there is no way a 2300+ player just threw away the drawn game and with it a drawn match, is there? Looking around the room, the previously tense crowd was looking not so tense. Smiles in fact. Big grins. Happy faces :)

Incredibly, we were given a gift and the drawn endgame turned into a win and with it a match score of 2.5 vs. 1.5. While it was a just result as Slava had achieved a totally winning position earlier on, the reality is that it was also totally drawn. Sure enough, Slava's opponent didn't need to use his remaining 5 minutes to realize it was over.

The entire room burst into a loud chatter. The emotion was just incredible. It is hard to describe the feeling of this team victory. Every move by every player was so important. Seemingly, the majority of the games were played with the Sluggers down to a minute left, squeezing every last bit out of each and every position, until the clock forced them to move. As expected, the Dallas Destiny was our toughest test to date and while we had a matchup advantage in three of the four boards, the gap was very small and the results proved that to be true. This could have easily been a tie score match, or even a loss and the result was in doubt until the fateful 78 ... Rxg7

78 moves! That's a lot of moves, but Eric battled for 92 moves and Gregory's game took 53 moves to get to the stalemate with only one pawn left. These Sluggers are definitely living up to the name and they fight and fight and fight until there are no pieces left!

We are one of only three teams with a perfect 3-0 match score and we are even ahead in tiebreaks, but next week we have our fellow expansion Tennessee Tempo again. While they have not had the results that we have had so far, they fought Dallas to a 2-2 tie last week and have shown that they are one or two tempi away from being able to win. We have to buckle down and play our A-game so we can maintain our perfect match record.

Our schedule in the second half will have San Francisco twice, Miami twice and Dallas for the finale. None of those will be easy matches to win, but you can count on the Seattle Sluggers to play on for 200 moves if that is what it takes to win a game!!