The Forgiving Flexible Najdorf

Last week the match between Arizona versus Manhattan had many interesting games. In my last blog I showed a video of the game Altounian vs Vovsha, an interesting positional masterpiece. Today we will move very far away from the positional end of the chess universe and take a look at complicated world of the Najdorf Sicilian.

The game between Ryan Goldenberg (NY Applesauce) and Robby Adamson (AZ Scorpions) was like watching bar room brawl. You know you could walk outside and be completely safe but something keeps you glued to your seat waiting and watching to see what happens next. Here we have two tactically gifted players going at it. Ryan gets and edge in the opening by can't put Robby away, then Robby starts to fight back with a vengence, time pressure soon troubles both players. Chances are missed by one player, then the other. Who would be left standing was anybody's guess until just a couple moves before the actual resignation.

I hope you enjoy this game, I sure did.

Here are all four games in a pgn viewer if you want to just straight to the skinny:

Board 1

Board 2

Board 3

Board 4