The Unfinished Chronicles Edition 3
Bullet maestro GM Andrew Tang cruised through the arena, winning with a very large score. Here are some of his best games:
A win to start the tournament and to get your streak going is important, and Andrew Tang managed to win this drawn endgame with two dirty tricks anticipating Hammer's premoves.
The game above is my favorite being in the London System, which is close to my heart. Tang played very well to win this miniature against a fellow grandmaster.
Try to play like a grandmaster! Find the answer to the puzzle above.
The above game is an example of an opening trap that allowed Tang to win two pieces in 23 moves. However, it wasn't all wins for Tang. One of his biggest competitors, GM Jon Ludvig Hammer, defeated him with a nice tactic in the game below:
These two rivals were neck in neck for much of the event, but Tang succeeded in getting the top seed, and Hammer the second. Four players were battling it out for the next four spots: GM Cemil Can Ali Morandi (a. k. a. Last7Samurai), IM Pavel Anisimov, IM-elect Levy Rozman and NM Kevin Bordi. As it turned out, Ali Morandi just barely came out on top with Anisimov at the bottom of the pack, which made them paired against each other. This meant that Rozman and Bordi would also play each other. NM Jason Morefield and an untitled player whose username is 'GMoves' came from behind to take the last two places, ahead of fan favorite IM John Bartholomew, among others.
This put Tang against Morefield, who he easily beat 3.5-0.5. Hammer vs. GMoves was 3-0, so let's focus on the more important matches. In the first game of the Ali Morandi vs. Anisimov match, Anisimov was up a piece and pawn and 10 seconds on the clock, when he started to play very odd moves. Anisimov blundered back the piece and allowed Ali Morandi to promote, which allowed Ali Morandi to checkmate with only one second left.
The second game was more civilized, with Anisimov punishing Ali Morandi for an unfortunate endgame blunder. A queen blunder helped Anisimov, but he did much of the work himself.
Cemil Can Ali Morandi won a really nice clean third game, with only one crucial miss from Anisimov.
Anisimov went on to win another clean, nice game to tie the match 2-2.
Ali Morandi won a beautiful game to seal the deal and bring him into the next round to play Hammer.
The Bordi vs. Rozman match wasn't very interesting, until the finish got crazy.
With that, Rozman moved on to play Tang. Sadly for Rozman, Tang was just too fast and flagged Rozman in worse positions three times. The other semifinal, Ali Morandi vs. Hammer, was much closer. Hammer got off to a 2-0 start. The first game ended in a beautiful mate where Hammer outplayed Ali Morandi.
The second win was a bit more lucky; Ali Morandi had a really nice position for most of the game, then in time trouble, it got crazy. Ali Morandi had mate in one in the final position, but flagged instead.
Ali Morandi made a comeback to win the next game, which was pretty fun.
The players played the same line in the next two games, trading wins, which allowed Hammer to defeat Ali Morandi 3-2. The final was set: Tang vs. Hammer. The previous Bullet Royal Arena Kings went to Tang, who defeated GM Georg Meier 3-1 in the final. Meier has won way more of these events than anyone else and tops the Arena Kings Leaderboard by a solid 900 points. Meier is playing in the Gideon Japhet Cup, so he wasn't available to login to his computer and play this event. Hammer didn't even qualify for the Blitz or Bullet events last month, so this was a first for him. "Oh that's mate." was commentator Robert Hess's response to Tang mating Hammer on the board in a game where Hammer made a few mistakes which Tang punished.
The players traded wins, but Tang was too much for Hammer, who lost the match 2-3.
Andrew Tang, the new Bullet Royal Arena Kings Champion
