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Yale College introduced their season again to life on Saturday within the SIG-sponsored 2023 Collegiate Chess League (CCL) after toppling the closely favored College of Missouri (Mizzou) by a single level.
3/4 scores by GM Nico Checa and NM Linden Lee, the latter of whom upset GMs Mikhail Antipov and Raja Harshit, steered Yale in direction of an 8.5-7.5 victory and pulled them again into finals rivalry.
Within the second match, Columbia College (CU) pulled out all of the stops towards The College of Virginia (UVA) and secured a 9-7 win, with CU’s board one GM Brandon Jacobson dominating the sector with a 4/4 rating.
Week six of the CCL will proceed on October 28 at 2:00 p.m. ET / 20:00 CEST / 11.30 p.m. IST.
Mizzou 7.5 – 8.5 Yale
Following a slender loss towards the season’s co-leaders, workforce Mizzou would have felt bullish about their possibilities of knocking over a struggling Yale facet. Geared up with three GMs of their lineup, Antipov, Harshit, and Luka Budisavljevic, Mizzou was doubtless trying to find a blowout rating towards a Yale facet who fielded solely two titled gamers, Jacobson and Lee.
Mizzou kicked off the match with a 3-1 rating in spherical one, with every of their GMs selecting up wins in lopsided matchups. Budisavljevic was probably the most spectacular as he shrewdly picked aside Lee’s King’s Indian Protection on board three after a wholesome pawn gambit that procured the bishop pair.
Lee would get his revenge nonetheless within the very subsequent spherical when he dispatched FM Beloslava Krasteva with the white items, a win that started an astonishing run of kind for the 18-year-old. A win for Checa over Budisavljevic in an offshoot of the Benko gambit propelled Yale to 2-1 within the second spherical (Mizzou’s Antipov defeated Maxim Yaskolko) however the spherical’s actual hero was the 1921-FIDE-rated Jorn Dammann, who held Harshit to a draw.
The underdog on this match, Yale, wins spherical two with a 2.5-1.5 rating!#CCL pic.twitter.com/NWO9IkmgUu
— CollegiateChessLeague (@CollegiateChess) October 21, 2023
With the scores tensely poised at 4.5-3.5, Yale pulled off one of many extra miraculous rounds of the CCL to date, beginning with Lee bowling over Antipov. A transfer eight novelty, 8.c5!? on the white facet of the Queen’s Gambit Declined: Ragozin Protection left Lee with an area benefit however prone to central breaks, which Antipov discovered.
Along with his place on the point of collapse, Lee defended nicely and drained Antipov’s clock down a minute, which was the catalyst for a serious blunder that allowed Yale’s board two to enter a profitable queen and pawn ending and scoop up a win.
In the meantime on board two, Checa received a miniature towards Harshit that was determined by the sensible 18.Nxe6!! which punctured Black’s kingside.
To seize a one-point lead within the match, Yale’s Yaskolko managed to beat Krasteva, who suffered from a Botez gambit, setting the scene for a spherical 4, winner-takes-all showdown.
After a Botez Gambit by White, Yale would possibly simply take the lead!#CCL pic.twitter.com/MNuBODMP7X
— CollegiateChessLeague (@CollegiateChess) October 21, 2023
On paper, Mizzou was nonetheless anticipated to win the match however carrying all of the momentum, Yale stepped up and scored a 2-2 outcome to win the match by a single level. Commentator Korley accurately predicted a win for Checa on board one over Antipov however the actual shock was Lee’s win over Harshit in a rook ending which led co-commentator Jules Gambit to ask a pertinent query: “Which rook endgames has he been learning”?
Our Sport of the Day, which secured a match win for Yale, has been annotated by GM Rafael Leitao.
Wins on boards three and 4 weren’t fairly sufficient for Mizzou, who slumped to their second straight loss. For Yale, the victory was an immense stride ahead, and with two wins and three losses after 5 weeks, they possess an inexpensive probability of ending within the high six.
UVA 7 – 9 CU
Persevering with week 5’s thrilling matchups was the do-or-die duel between the season’s winless groups, who each desperately wanted to win to maintain their possibilities of making the playoffs alive.
UVA and CU are pretty matched groups when it comes to lineup and each have two titled gamers every, FM Jason Morefield and NM Owen McCoy for UVA and Jacobson and FM Aristo Liu for CU. As Korley expressed, the outcome would doubtless come right down to “the place the upsets occur,” given their closeness in common rankings.
From the viewer’s perspective, a 2-2 tie was the right curtain-raiser for the match and it wasn’t till the second spherical that cracks started to indicate. Whereas Jacobson, Morefield, and McCoy coasted to 2/2, Liu conceded a draw towards UVA’s Mahin Ganesan in a 74-move Scotch whereas movie star visitor commentator GM Andrew Tang watched on.
Regardless of their 4.5-3.5 lead, UVA was unable to cease a CU rampage in spherical three. A 3rd straight win for Jacobson, this time over McCoy within the Reti Opening: Dutch Variation, in addition to wins for Edouard Fleury and Ze Wang, put CU within the field seat heading into the ultimate spherical.
Two factors to the nice, CU solely wanted 1.5 factors to win the match and with Jacobson on board one, it already felt as if they had been midway there. Successful positions for McCoy and Ganesan appeared to place UVA again within the hunt however Jacobson and Wang received their video games to safe a 9-7 match end in favor of CU.
After a disappointing begin to their marketing campaign, CU has moved again into playoff rivalry, courtesy of a herculean effort from their board one Jacobson. With three round-robin video games left within the season, the New York-based workforce will doubtless must win not less than two of their remaining matches to complete within the high six.
All Video games | Spherical 4
The CCL is the premier on-line chess competitors for school college students. The CCL Fall Season is a workforce occasion that began on September 23 and includes a $25,000 prize fund.
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