It was another Saturday Hivechess tournament and it has been a while since I played chess. I haven't been available to play but I have been following the Candidates with Sindarov stealing the show.
It has become a challenge Jaki and IM on who gets to win the tournament. Sadly for me I lost all the games I played against them. It was a tough. With that by the side, I still did well with a 2000+ performance despite the last game against stranger where I missed so many chances to win due to the time pressure from berserking. It was a win of 8 games out of 14 games played. I did not waste any time at all when it came to berserking. Since it was a 4 minutes time control, I berserked all games for more points.
This game against migmag which was very impressive. I gave a poison pawn on a6 in exchange of mate threat on the white king. First off the white king was exposed because of the weakness g2. Also my rook is open on the h file, with the combination of the rook being open on the h file and the knight on e5, it was white's bishop that was left to get rid off. Hence the reason why I gave the pawn on a6. Once the bishop grabbed the pawn, it was checkmate in 2 moves.
At this point, it's all over, checkmate come next with Rxh2.
This game against Fcastrol was a simplee threat all over move. With his bishop struck at the center of the board and pinned to his rook, it began clear that there is nothing that can be done to save the bishop and that's how the win came in for me.
It was the ending seconds of the tournament and this was the game that would take me to 3rd. I missed the opportunity to pull my rook into the game with Re7. I was scared of my king being exposed the perpetual checks that I forgot my queen and rook were already covering all the checking squares that could come from the white queen. Sadly I ended up losing this game to a poor play in the ending. This left me with no other option than to finish in 4th place. But that's still an improvement. I looking forward to the next round and I hope I get to win it although it has become so difficult to do so with the strong players around.