Jose Rafael Gascon consolidated his lead by beating Ryan Harper with the white pieces. Harper is a dangerous attacking player, but he has problems getting his game going with Black. Gascon played a Maroczy Bind in classical fashion, first restricting all active options of his opponent, before switching his attention to the kingside, to go after the black king. Gascon is now on 6 out of 7, a full point ahead of the rest of the field.

After all the action of the previous rounds, the sixth round was a relatively quiet one. Katerina Nemcova got some pressure from a Bb5 Sicilian with the white pieces against Jose Rafael Gascon, to the extent that the Venezuelan felt obliged to sacrifice a pawn. This indeed gave some relieve and after the exchange of queens Black had full compensation. Possibly 19.Qc2 was a better try at organizing White's forces. Since they agreed to a draw, Gascon remains in the sole lead with 5 out of 6. Irine Sukandar and Gergely Szabo took it easy today and played a quick draw.

In round 4 we saw five decisive games on the first six boards and we now have two tournament leaders: IM Jose Rafael Gascon and GM Sipke Ernst. The young man from Venezuela keeps impressing with confident and strong play. Judging from his games he must have been working hard on his chess lately and this is clearly starting to pay off. In Gascon-Pecorelli Black didn't seem to be aware of the stem game Vallejo Pons-Kramnik, Linares 2004 and quickly got into trouble. The star move was the positional pawn sacrifice 15.e5! after which Gascon went on to produce another model game.

Venezuelan IM Jose Rafael Gascon has taken the sole lead in the tournament by beating GM Sipke Ernst in a complicated game. The Dutchman deliberately played a risky opening with Black and indeed White seemed to be doing well after the opening. In the commentary room we were expecting White to break somewhere with b3, but when Gascon hesitated doing so, the position quickly became very unclear.

The third round was played on Saturday evening and was a most exciting one. All three games on the top boards were eventually drawn, so nobody is on 100% anymore, but what a great fights. On the first board Dutch GM Sipke Ernst just couldn't help himself and gambitted a pawn with Black as early as move 7 against Cuban IM Humberto Pecorelli Garcia. Things quickly got out of control, and while White was objectively on top for most of the game, the game was always very complicated. Even in the final position White still has good chances in the knight ending, but Pecorelli must have been very tired as well after such a long tense game and offered a draw.

  1. 3rd Srefidensi Chess Celebration 2015 – round 2
  2. 3rd Srefidensi Chess Celebration 2015 – round 1
  3. Invitation 3rd Srefidensi Chess Celebration 2015
  4. Srefidensi Chess Celebration

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