2010 Philadelphia Inventors 8/23 Match Recap

Well, this is pretty cool. The Philadelphia Inventors won their first match with a score of 3 to 1. The Inventors played Smith, Bartell, Dehmelt and Costigan. This line up was very strong on the bottom boards, and as it turned out, the Inventors secured 2 points from the lower boards. Karl Dehmelt beat Arthur Shen and Richard Costigan beat Sean Finn. Unfortunately, Bryan Smith lost to Joel Benjamin on the top board, but the Tom Bartell was able to beat Boris Gulko. Judging from the Philadelphia Inventor's line up, this type of victory may be common this year. The Inventors dont have the highest rated players in the league on their roster, but this allows them to have more depth on the bottom. I am not sure if it is strategy or just chance, but it could definitely work out well for the Inventors.

Lets not get ahead of ourselves though ;)

Here, I am just going to post up the games with a few comments after each of them. Depending on how the rest of my week goes, I may or may not do some in depth analysis of these games.



Well, at least this game was interesting. The c6 followed almost immediately by c5 is a very interesting idea in the Caro-Kann. 14. g5 was another interesting idea, as Black greatly restrains White's position, especially those doubled f pawns!



Here is a very cool game. White takes central control and better piece activity for Black's better presence on the Queen side. Black is able to neutralize White's activity, and then his Queen side pawn majority wins the game.



White gets a grip on the light squares, especially d5, and Black cannot contend with this. Well, it was a little more complicated than that, but that is part of it!



Black gets some nice piece activity out of the opening and is able to slowly convert his advantage into a win.

Well, that is a wrap for the recap. Maybe some more in depth analysis will be coming soon. If you want to check out the other games, you can find them here. The next match is Wednesday, September 1. The Inventors play the Boston Blitz, who incidentally got 4-0ed this week! It should be an interesting match.

2010 Philadelphia Inventors: Richard Costigan

Richard Costigan is the Manager of the Philadelphia Inventors. He is in the Philadelphia Chess Hall of Fame.

Lets look at his games!



It was nice of Lawrence Day to play out the checkmate.

Well that wraps up the player profiles for the 2010 Philadelphia Inventors. Many apologies to the last few players for their shorter profiles. Over the course of the season, I will try and post some more stuff about their chess careers.

The first match is tonight. I dont know how I am going to handle coverage of the matches. I actually dont have an ICC account which could make things difficult! I also dont really want an ICC account, but maybe I should get one, I dont know. Regardless, I will do something and it looks like the Philadelphia Inventors have a decent chance of winning the match, or at least getting a draw. Our top boards are a lower rated than New Jersey's top boards, but our lower boards are higher rated. It will be very interesting to see how it all unfolds.

Philadelphia will play Bryan Smith, Thomas Bartell, Karl Dehmelt and Richard Costigan tonight. Good luck to all of them!