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What an escape!!

That is the minimum of with I can express my astonishment of the way the game between AbdelAziz ElMahmoud and Mohamad ElHabash ended. After some uncertainty of play in the opening and the subsequent middle game phase, Mohamad succeeded in holding the initiative. The exchange of mistakes and imprecise moves increased due to the volatile nature of the position, but, again, Mohamad succeeded firmly in maintaining his initiative and by sacrificing the exchange he started collecting a lot of white pawns, reaching a more than winning position, as it was sufficient to pay attention to some small tricks and the point will be in the bag. One imprecise move, and the clever AbdelAziz get profit from it: The white king was in a stalemate position, surrounded by the black heavy pieces, without any white pawns on the board. Suffice for AbdelAziz to get rid of his rook and queen, and that what he succeeded in doing it, and Voilà: Stalemate. What a finish for a much disputed game.

After transposition of moves, a Closed Sicilian is reached between the 2 x-champions Faisal Khairallah and Antoine Kassis. Each one proceeded in a thematic way: Faisal prepared his initiative on the king side, and Antoine on the queen side. The later one was reduced to the minimum by Faisal’s paly, while his one was growing towards Antoine’s king. As every experienced player knows, playing defensively and passively is costly. With very precise play, and with  petite combinaison, à la Capablanca, one after another, Faisal succeeded in collecting a couple of important pawns. The counter-play generated by Antoine came too late to hold the position.

It seems that Tarek Moudallal starts climbing the leader in the standing (touch wood) after beating Gen. Hassan Jouni with the same variation that he used to smash Ahmad Najjar. Gen. Jouni handled badly the opening, and killer pin by Tarek’s pieces against White’s knight netted the later a piece, and after a few moves, the game point.

The exchange Slav is reputed as a dull line that gives nothing for both players (which I strongly disagree). After a mass of exchanges of pieces and pawns in Giorgio Kaloust – Mohamad Farhat encounter, both players reached a bishop-ending, when Giorgio tried to make something with his lonely bishop, but in vein. The split of the game point was the normal result.

The Grand Prix attack, adopted by Mahdi Kaouri against Ahmad Najjar’ Siclian didn’t bring a success. Even after sacrificing an exchange for a pawn, Ahmad played strongly, as usual, in repulsing his Mahdi’s attack, and even he succeeded by snatching the initiative from his opponent. With precise moves, he forced his opponent to resign in a hopeless position.

As you will notice, dear reader, from the pairing bellow, with all the respect to the other players and the importance of their games, the round 9 encounter between the current champion Amr El-Jawish and the leader the x-champion Faisal Khairallal will be the focal point of the event, with a 10,000 volt Amperes on the nerves of the nerves of each one of them. Can’t wait to see it.

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