Bermuda Open: Rounds 2 & 3

So I didn't quite wake up to lovely weather of the day before. In fact it poured and was windy on Saturday. However things could have been worse. I could have been in Baltimore digging out of 30 inches of snow! I'm sure Dennis Strenzwilk (all 26 Bermuda Opens) and Ed Westing who are from Maryland were greatly relieved that occurred after they got here.

A lousy day in Bermuda is better then
a lousy day in New York.

Lighthouse comes on early!
I've climbed up to the top of that lighthouse,
but not happening on this trip!

The first round on Saturday is at 9:00 am. It comes way too quickly if you've been up late the night before. If you read yesterday's report and looked at my game from round 1 you know I wasn't up playing chess until 2:00 am. However some of my friends were, so I did hang out for awhile until I finally couldn't take it any longer.

In the second round it would be my turn to have the marathon game of almost 6 hours. Admittedly I made a lot harder on myself then necessary. I had a crappy position out of the opening and then my opponent so graciously hung a knight for nothing. He didn't even get a pawn for it. However he did have a passed pawn, and then I gave him a second passed pawn. So for many moves he had these two passed pawns sitting on b2 and c3. There had been a point where I almost repeated the position to take a draw. Reflecting back on all those drawish positions that I wouldn't play out in Philadelphia a few weeks ago, I decided I needed to work this out. Using my bishop and queen I controlled his two passed pawns and then made my break and create a passed pawn of my own.

PW-HSprechman020610.pgn


Unlike the first round where there were no upsets, there were a few in round two. Gordon Richie of Canada, rated 1924 beat Michael Khodarkovsky rated 2353. Garry Forbes of Great Britian rated 1925 held WIM Ester Epstein rated 2209 to a draw. Natasha Christiansen rated 1849 held FM Joel Salman to a draw. Other then that the top seeds went through the round unscathed.

My game finished right before round three was scheduled to start. They gave me a bit of break to grab something to eat. Sometimes the service can be a little slow at the lobby restaurant, but I asked them to make me my sandwich as soon as possible. They actually brought it pretty quickly and I did manage to eat and get back in time for my 3:20 start time.

I think the morning marathon took a lot out of me. My idea of a long game is 3 hours and I played over 5.5 hours. I got paired up against a 1960 in round 3. I got another one of those horrible positions on the Black side of one of these random queen pawn openings that I hate playing against. As usual I had difficulty getting anything going on the queen side. tried to free things up on my king side, but all I managed to do expose my king and give him lots of play. Eventually I was down a full rook and my king was just getting hammered. Enough was enough!

MRatford-PW020610.pgn


At the top, things were starting to thin out in terms of perfect score. GM Larry Christiansen beat FM Adnan Kobas. GM Pascal Charbonneau beat CM Aleksandr Osrovskiy. GM Nick de Firmian drew with Andrei Moffat. GM Alexander Ivanov beat Sylvester Smarty. IM David Cummings beat Gordon Richie. Going into Sunday's round 4 there are 4 perfect scores. Those will be down to two at the most since round 4 match ups amongst the undefeated are:

GM Christiansen - GM Charbonneau
GM Ivanov - IM Cummings

Still in the hunt are Salman, de Firmian, Moffat, Epstein and Ho all with 2.5. The 5th round should be quite an exciting round.

As is the custom here what does everyone do after the afternoon round? Eat and drink together! Here's a number of the players at Bocci an Italian restaurant on the hotel grounds. Very good food and wine.