This 2nd qualifier is certainly going to be a thriller. In round 1, there were many close games and surprises.
Shannon Yearwood, CARIFTA gold medalist, defeated Leonard Duncan. Yearwood played the Scandinavian defense which transposed into an Alehine’s defense. Shannon eventually got to an endgame with her rook versus Duncan’s knight. After lots of maneuvering Shannon won a pawn, sacrificed her rook for Duncan’s knight and created an unstoppable passed pawn.
Another interesting game was played by Carlyle Singh, who seemed to release the pressure he was exerting on Colin Knight. Colin eventually won though the game was full of excitement for a long time.
Earlier we were following the battle of the 2 juniors, Rishon Ramlogan and Daniel Bhola. Daniel sacrificed a pawn for an attack and went on the win a rook for a knight. However he did not create open lines for his rooks quickly enough and eventually went into a lost endgame. For his victory Rishon gets to play against David Jones.
While we can literally speak about every game, including Bowles’ beautiful game against Carl Jacob, and Fitzpatrick’s fight against Sears, we cannot but turn our attention to Leemoon’s battle against new Candidate Master, Daryl Davis.
Davis seemed to be under pressure early in the game but eventually stabilized the position and gradually got a strong position. He then maneuvered his knight to the g4 square as he attacked Leemoon’s king. Unfortunately for Leemoon he ran into a tactic from Davis who sacrificed his queen and won a piece. Leemoon had no response and Davis took the full point. For his victory Daryl Davis now has to face top seed, Cecil Lee.
The full results from round 1 are as follows:
Cecil Lee 1 – Hermes Mentor 0
Ken Fitzpatrick 0 – Frank Sears 1
Colin Knight 1 – Carlyle Singh 0
Mikel Martin 0 – David Jones 1
Leonard Duncan 0 – Shannon Yearwood 1
Carl Jacobs 0 – Andrew Bowles 1
Hayden Lee 0 – Zurich Smith 1
Brian Leemoon 0 – Daryl Davis 1
Daniel Bhola 0 – Rishon Ramlogan 1
Sean Yearwood —- BYE
Round 2 is already in progress and the pairings are as follows:
Daryl Davis – Cecil lee
Frank Sears – Shannon Yearwood
Zurich Smith – Colin Knight
David Jones – Rishon Ramlogan
Andrew Bowles – Sean Yearwood
Ken Fitzpatrick – Leonard Duncan
Carlyle Singh – Hayden Lee
Mikel Martin – Daniel Bhola
Hermes Mentor – Carl Jacobs
Bye – Brian Leemoon
Tune in later for some commentary by CM Joshua Johnson, who has already qualified for the 2014 National Finals.
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