Another dissapointing loss for the Sharks and once again versus Seattle. Seattle, whom is a new team in the USCL, is doing just as well as San Francisco in their quest to clinch the first spot in our division. Their match next monday will be decisive when it comes to deciding this. When it comes to the bitten sharks once again we are tied with Dallas for the third and last qualifying spot in the West with the only problem being Dallas Destiny's better tie-break. Bad thing is that now we not only have to depend on our own results but someone else's. All we can do now is try to finish winning the last two matches.

Tennessee has struggled this season so we should have decent chances to score against them but there is still a difficult match against San Francisco in the last round. Dallas has to play Philadelphia and Seattle, both teams that are performing well lately. Assuming  we both win our matches in week 9 (against Philadelphia and Tennessee) it would be an exciting final week to see who gets into the playoffs, as Dallas would face Seattle while Miami would face San Francisco. Even though I think the odds will be against us due to our foul play all throughout the season, time will tell.... we have not been beaten yet. We are looking forward to the next two matches, as I said some other time.... we don't believe in losing and falling down. It takes a MAN to get up as many times as possible after falling down. Now let's go to the games:

On board 1 - Becerra-Serper, we saw Serper's favorite Paulsen set-up, the one he just lost to Friedel a couple of weeks. After some drama it looked like Serper had a clear pawn up but the position was not so easy due to white's pawn majority on the queenside and the black pawns there were distant from each other. Becerra was able to create some counterplay there in what it looked like it was going to be a win for white but the king was left a little unsafe and Serper was able to find a drawing by perpetual continuation and the game ended in a fair draw.

On board 2 Mikhalchuk-Lugo saw blas playing one of his pet lines and coming up with a novelty. In one game from Blas versus Airpaetian in US Championships she had a better move which Blas thought Mikhaulchuk was looking into playing. After Blas went for a different variation than the aforementioned game he got a nice position with a pair of bishops and a solid center and some chances for an attack over the queenside where white had castled. The b file open proved to be decisive as black sacrificed a rook on b2 to destroy the defences of white's castling. A Very nice game by the tactical monster Lugo which brings him back into action.

 
Mikhailuk-Lugo after 24. Na4-c3
Lugo started his impressive attack with 24...Rxb2!
after which 25.Nxd5 cxd5 26.Kxb2 Rb8 27. Kc1
Bxa3+ led to a raging and unstoppable attack for Lugo,
in what turned out to be the lone bright spot for
Miami on the evening.

On board 3 was Moreno-Milat, Seattle brought in their line up canadian FM Marcel Milat and he played a Benko Gambit (one of my favorite lines) and in a very complicated variation Moreno seemed to have gone astray allowing black all the counterplay and a fairly easy to win game. In the opening Moreno's manouver of Bg5-Bf4 seemed to be wrong as the bishop then in f4 occupies an important square for the knight in h3 to come to f4. Anyhow.... like I said before... Moreno is out of shape (just like your reporter here!!) and we hope to go thru some draining process to get rid of this disease!!.... (easier said than done!)

On board 4 Cabrera's opening knowledge is very limited and got in very bad shape out of the opening... the time advantage aside from the positional one were heavily i white's favor. The set-up c5-d6-e5 in that black used in this particular line seemed very dubious.

        Time will tell what the out of shape Sharks need to do to come back from this hole in which we have placed ourselves in. A win over Tennesee next week will hopefully pump our self-esteem. And we hope Dallas faces some problems vs Philly with Ehlvest and Alaskan Bryan Smith. Probably will all come down to final round. May the best team win!