CHAPTER 46: THRIVING IN THE TOURNAMENT!

After a long and exhausting double-header game, the next few rounds went pretty easily for the trio of Sheva, Anna, and Claudia. For Sheva and Claudia, even though their momentum was getting cut short by their draw result, they managed to recover pretty quickly.

In the sixth round, Sheva managed to beat another local player with a huge margin. It wasn’t even close, as Sheva managed to outsmart the man since the opening round, going for the strange Benko Gambit that not a lot of people use anymore against the 1.d4 opening. This was another prize that Sheva got from the system, which, coincidentally enough, also helped him complete his repertoire so that he could be ready against all the first moves possible. In the end, he managed to win in just 45 minutes, forcing the opponent to resign on the 19th move.

Claudia was also the same. She forced her opponent into a tough and complicated duel in the Italian Opening, waiting patiently and luring her opponent into taking every bait she threw until her opponent crumbled like wet paper. In the end, after playing for more than two hours, her opponent finally resigned, seeing no hope of overturning the situation on the board.

As for Anna, well, after winning against her big rival, she managed to keep up her momentum well, beating a Women International Master (WIM) player from Vietnam with the rating of 2257 in a blood-bathed game. She didn’t show any mercy, eating all of her opponent’s pieces until only a king and a rook remained on her opponent’s side, while Anna still had two full bishops, a queen, and three pawns remaining on the board. Her opponent still made a little bit of effort even in the situation where Anna’s blade was so close to her neck, but unfortunately, the stalemate trap she set was far from successful, and in the end, Anna won the game and got one more point, stepping closer to the WGM title that she was aiming for.

Then came the seventh round, the sixth day that they had been in Vietnam. It was quite an experience for his first time going abroad, but honestly, Sheva started missing his mom’s cooking. Not that what he ate here was bad, of course, but nothing could beat the meal that a mother prepared for her son. Fortunately, this didn’t really affect his game, as he still did well in this round.

The opponent was Jonathan Bodemar, a boy who was about the same age or even younger than him, coming from Thailand. His rating was 1788, and while it was far from the top-seeded player like Claudia, who was about to touch the threshold of 2000, the boy still gave Sheva a fight of his life.

It was a very close game with a lot of ups and downs for both players. Hell, at one point, Sheva even fell at a disadvantage, having his knight trapped and committed suicide while taking a pawn in a desperate move before getting slaughtered by his opponent’s pawn. Fortunately, he managed to recover in the endgame phase, taking advantage of his opponent’s mistake to push his two last pawns forward to the point that one of them was about to get promoted into a queen. Even though his opponent, Jonathan, still had a bishop and a knight against Sheva’s knight and two pawns, Sheva’s pawns were too advanced on the board, forcing the boy to resign on the spot.

Anna also managed to grab another win. This time, it was against another Indian player, a young FIDE Master named Jimmy Jubin. He was around the same age as Sheva, with a rating of 2307. Their game was pretty close, and anyone who saw the match through the eye of the computer bar would be dumbfounded to see that they both played a very accurate game up until the 30th move. It was quite rare to see a game where both players made no mistakes like this, especially when they both were far from the GM title.

However, it was quite a different matter once the time scramble hit them both. When their time was down to less than 5 minutes, they both started shifting their pieces hastily, and that was when the evaluation bar had a cardio exercise. Both players made a lot of mistakes that should’ve never happened on their level, such as Anna who somehow hung a fork and Jimmy who failed to see that or Jimmy who forgot that his pawn was pinned by Anna’s bishop toward the king and couldn’t protect his bishop which ended up in the same thing, Anna didn’t realize that too.

It was quite painful to watch them both getting blindsided by time, yet in the end, it was Anna, with her hunger for the win and the WGM title, who came out as the ultimate winner. In the blurry battlefield where both players couldn’t see anything clearly, somehow, she managed to spot a brilliant tactic, retreating her king to avoid getting checked, sacrificing her pawn, and in return, managing to sneak into her opponent’s area and started eating all of the opponent’s pawns alive.

After seeing that Anna’s pawn was unstoppable from the promoting square, her opponent finally resigned, giving her another point and sending her close to the WGM title. Not only that, her position also got catapulted into the second place with 5 points out of seven rounds, only behind Radha Devan, who beat her on the first day by half a point. Her chance to win the entire section was still pretty open, and it would be a lie if Anna said she didn’t set her eyes on that.

Unfortunately, Claudia failed to follow those two to win against her opponent in the seventh round. She was forced into a quick draw after a pretty boring game with not so much action. This was probably due to the flaw in her game, as the girl had never been the bravest person in the room. She spotted some good moves that could force her opponent to give in, yet her fear of stepping out of her comfort zone cost her the entire game, and she had to be satisfied with the result that she got.

In the end, after playing for seven rounds, Sheva managed to top the table with 6.5 points, and somehow, Claudia and the highest rated player in this section, Cao Van Binh, were trailing behind with 6 points.

Then, after six days full of action, the most important day finally came; the last day of the tournament, which was also the second double-header of the tournament.