Canada vs. Bulgaria:

The team had a tough draw today in Bulgaria, but they proved up to the challenge. To change things up, this time I’ll go over the results board by board:

On Board 1, Maili-Jade had the white pieces against a former Women’s World Champion (and also an elected member of the Bulgarian Parliament), Antoaneta Stefanova. A bold central pawn sacrifice by Maili-Jade cleared lines and achieved a very strong attack. Stefanova didn’t find the best defense immediately, but finishing off one of the world’s elite players is far from easy. Maili-Jade had only one clear chance for a decisive advantage before Stefanova shored up her defense with resourceful and active play. Much later, Maili-Jade was the one on the back foot in a tricky knight vs. bishop endgame where neither side could expect to play perfectly, but her resourceful defense proved to be enough to hold the draw.

Bich Ngoc faced another elite player in 2400-rated IM Nurgyul Salimova, and with Black to boot. Her play was impressively steady, and despite trying for 74 moves, Salimova could not break through. White had a knight vs. bishop ending on this board as well, with the same final outcome.

Svitlana played a London System that turned into an enterprising central advance against Black’s King’s Indian setup, and by move 25 or so, she had built up a clear advantage. The players traded tactical blows and pressed for attacks on opposite wings. Svitlana spent most of the middlegame calling the shots, until she went astray in a complicated position under severe time pressure on move 36 (not long before she would have received extra time on move 40). Suddenly Black launched an easy-to-miss mating attack miss, and Svitlana had to shed material to save her king. That cost proved to be too high, and Black eventually brought home the point for Bulgaria.

Oksana played another positional game, with Black in a Queen’s Gambit Declined. White was the first to mix things up with a speculative kingside pawn gambit that seemed to weaken her own king more than Oksana’s. A queenless middlegame followed, with a static pawn structure and a lot of minor piece maneuvering. Oksana’s advantage slowly evaporated, though she retained the extra pawn. Two strange things followed. First, a few moves after the time control, with 13:41 left on her clock, Oksana used 10 minutes on a bishop retreat that immediately hung an exchange. It’s possible that she thought White’s bishop pair was so strong that it was worth breaking up, even at the cost of a rook-for-bishop swap, but that idea is either too deep or too shallow to be practical. (It’s hard to tell which!) From that point on, Oksana had to simply struggle to hold the balance, until she wound up in a rather dire-looking endgame with rook and knight vs. two rooks. The second strange thing was that her opponent had a 23-minute to 4-minute time advantage on move 45, but two dozen moves later, Oksana still had four minutes, and her opponent was down to less than one, without having had to negotiate too many complications. Oksana offered a repetition of moves in a somewhat messy but clearly losing situation, and presumably with her nerves badly jangled by zeitnot (time trouble), White acceded to the draw. She probably did so in order to secure the 2.5-1.5 match victory for Bulgaria, but looking at things from our side, rather than blaming Oksana for clinching the loss for Canada, I think she deserves credit for salvaging a half point! Every half point matters in the final standings, and even considering her opponent’s time pressure, actually winning on her board from that position seemed very unlikely.

The end result was a hard fought, 1.5-2.5 loss to a very strong team.

Current record: 4-1-2 (16/28), 36th. Next opponent: Australia.

Over in the Open section, the guys lost to Slovenia, 1-3.