Boylston Chess Club
dont worry about it boston played a terrific season you guys should be proud of yourselves.
Thanks for all your time and efforts DG! Having this amount of interest in the team is destined to be a Good Thing.
Wait 'till next year!!
-Matt
Do you think Boston could have beaten SF?
DG,
Thanks for your effort covering the Blitz. I always enjoy reading your post-match recaps! Having said that, of course I intend to quibble with this one (and not just because you linked to Glickman-Riordan again) 
I think Larry's opening choice was a good one, and I strongly disagree that our strategy for the match depended on a win on board 1. We had draw odds and outrated all of our opponents save one (if you use the latest ratings and not the year-old ones). The big thing we had to avoid, as the match proved, was an upset on one of the top boards. Larry knew Charbonneau is a dangerous player, so why wouldn't he choose a solid opening like 2.c3 that still gives minor winning chances?
p.s. Yes, I would have played out my game had it given us any chance to save the match. I strongly doubt Hess would lose the final position, but he was in time pressure as well, so who knows? To be fair, the only way I got a good position out of the opening was by cheaply exploiting the fact that it was a team match -- 5.d4 isn't played very often because of the draw after 5..b5 6.Bb3 Nxd4 7.Nxd4 ed 8.c3, and if 8..dc then 9.Qd5 Be6 10.Qc6+ Bd7 11.Qd5 etc. The same thing happened when I played Ba4+ and Bc2; in a normal game, he might very well just play ..Bg4 again, but at that point it wasn't yet clear that the other boards were swinging to NY.
And by the way, I think the "Bulletin Board Material" fracas is a great story. Could have come straight out of the NFL. Wait, would that make you Bill Belichick to Jennifer's Eric Mangini?
Charles,
Re: Glickman-Riordan - I guess it is just your bad luck that the game is my only win against a master that is posted on the internet. In fact, I also defeated FM Kelleher with the c3 Sicilian although it was an Unr G/30 (at the Herb Healy) and I only won because he pushed too hard in a drawn position. Unfortunately, just like your picture from the NY Masters, you're destined to see it again and again. 
Re: Belichick-Mangini - The flaw in that analogy, as Ilya has pointed out, is that I'm not part of the team. Jenn is treating my coverage as if reflects the views of the Blitz, while members of team continually go out of thier way to let everyone know that it's not. The young league is obviously still grappling with the concept of "Independent Coverage." As a result, I'm getting it from both sides now (which is ok with me, especially if it means more interest for the Blitz and more readers for the blog). At some point I may post about the "Independent Coverage" experiment again.
2 notes
oops
hit enter by mistake. Anyway:
1. I think that even if a comment comes from someone who isn't an official part of a team, that doesn't mean it can't be a motivating factor. I'm sure that when a sportsteam is an underdog and every newspaper in the country talks about how they have no chance to win, the teams will use that as bulletin board material.
2. If anyone doesn't like their photo, just send me a new one and I'll change it right away!
I can imagine what Larry will think when can reads this great piece of work.
My guess is he will think
"gee I knew I shouldn't have played 2.c3"
Thanks for your colorful description of the match-up; very interesting.
Commenting by HaloScan
