Home Town Hero Tied at Top
After three rounds of the New England Masters, Rhode Island favorite Jorge Sammour-Hasbun is tied at the top of the standings with GM Timur Gareev. Both players are the only ones sporting a perfect record of 3/3 and will meet in round four.
Just behind them is a group of five players including GMs Sergey Erenburg and Keith Arkell, the newly crowned English Champion. They are joined by IM Justin Sarkar, Frenchman Gabriel Battaglini and Canadian youngster Victor Kaminski. Kaminski beat GM-Elect Josh Friedel in round 3 and as a reward for his efforts he will meet GM Leonid Kritz in the 4th round.
Other good performances so far have come from Marc Esserman, currently looking at a GM norm, and Canadians Raja Panjwani and Shiyam Thavandiram who both currently have IM norm performances. Of course a lot can change with six rounds remaining.
The first three rounds have seen some exciting games. Gareev has not been shy in shedding a material advantage after a long term exchange sacrifice in round one against FM Paul MacIntyre and then a piece sacrifice in round 2 against FM James Schuyler. Sarkar sacrifice of a piece against Luis Belliard in round one may not have been sound (according to Sarkar himself in breakfast conversations) but certainly looked flashy.
One of the most watched games was on board two in round three against Jorge Sammour-Hasbun and IM Jacek Stopa. This was much anticipated locally due to last year’s USCL Championship match between the Boston Blitz and Dallas Destiny which was eventually won by Dallas using a blitz play-off system. Stopa was responsible for knocking out Sammour-Hasbun in the play-offs which was key to their victory.
Most of the games can be seen live via the website each round (all games can be downloaded via the pgn file at the main site) and we’ll hopefully have some photographs soon. I’m trying to bribe players into blogging about their experience here at the New England Masters but only Evan Rosenberg has taken me up so far on a free buffet lunch ticket. Hopefully we can get more thoughts from other players throughout the week.
Tags: New England Masters 2008
Blog/News | Chris Bird | 13 August 2008 |
