Offerspill news - week 15

Fasten your seatbelts, guys. This report is a juicy one.

Several Offerspill members, all Danish coincidentally, have participated in strong international tournaments. However, they have played so many tournaments that some of then will be presented in another article where you can enjoy a couple of hand picked games against strong opponents.

Is there any better way to learn?

Also, there have been a couple of internal tournaments in our Offerspill Online League with a lot of entertainment, as usual.

A lot of stuff to look forward to this week, so let's get started.

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Opening of the Week

This is, hopefully, the start of a permanent column in these weekly reports which will introduce a different opening each week, displayed with a thematic game.

The Bird’s Opening is the 6th most popular opening and is a very aggressive opening. White starts out weakening his kingside slightly by starting a flank attack on the centre.  This opening is not used in lots of top level play but some of the most beautiful games in chess history have been played using the Bird’s Opening.

The game below is a small gem of a game by famous Danish master Bent Larsen.

Enjoy.

Larsen - Fuster (1-0)


Why play Bird's opening?

I've prepared a short list of winning arguments in favour of this opening, in case any of you needed some convincing.

1. It is has considerable surprise value. Generally, very few players are more  prepared for this opening as opposed to the vast amount of attention players lavish at starting moves like 1. e4, 1. d4, and to a lesser extent 1. c4 and 1. Nf3.

2. You can put a definite stamp on the game from the first move. By playing Bird's you minimize the number of different types of middlegame you have to learn.
Black still has many choices of course, but not as many as in other openings.

3. This is basically the same as the previous point, but you are forcing Black to play real chess right away. There is no ready made drawing defense against this, and virtually all Bird games are strategically complex and unbalanced.

If this sounds like you then I recommend giving it a go in one of our Online League tournaments - and who knows, maybe it will feature in a thematic tournament?

And why not repeat the success of last week with another classic Pixar video?
This one is even called For the Birds, so it must be relevant.

Magnus Carlsen and his Offerspill members or a couple of birds? Hard to tell.


Give Bird's Opening a go in our next Online League tournament!

Radnicki GM Round Robin

Jonas and Ellen have both been playing in other tournaments, but we'll update you on the adventures of the travelling Dane - Jesper Thybo. This time he participates in a stroung all-play-all tournament in Belgrade. The event started a couple of days ago, and lasts from April 11th - 19th.

The famous "Thybo stare".

Luckily, Jesper is showing good form so far and started the event with a magnificent win on the Black side of an Italian game against an International Master.

Nikolovski - Thybo (0-1)

The feeling when playing Jesper Thybo.


Results and a selection of games can be viewed here.

League updates

In this section we'll reviewe some of the tournaments that have been played in our Online League recently.

Also, make sure to check how you are doing in the overall league standings here.

Online League Bullet Arena

This was a close one. Soon-to-be GM Linus Johansson (LinusJ) ended up as the winner, but really had to fight for it as FM RetiLangweiler almost caught up to him at the end. The latter also had the higher win rate of the two with 84 percent - impressive! FM Papadosor finished third which gave us a podium full of title holders this time, a rare feat.

Standings

We'll finish the update with a fun game between two of our usual suspects, namely Gvein and cbruvold. The latter is streaming quite frequently on her Twitch channel.

cbruvold - Gvein (0-1)


Results and games are available here.

Online Thematic Blitz Arena

This week we chose a pretty aggressive opening for our thematic blitz, which should have suited more than a few of our members.

The Staunton Gambit entails offering Black a pawn early on for an initiative and a lead in development. Check out our YouTube channel for a short tutorial.

Starting position

It's only move 4, but White has already sacrificed a pawn.


Standings

The tournament winner was in big trouble early on against LaraJ, but found a way to hang on and ultimately turned the game around.

FM Papadosor - WIM LaraJ (1-0)


Results and games are available here.

Online League Blitz Arena

We are halfway through the April season of our Offerspill Online League and we have two pretty clear leaders, namely LinusJ and RetiLangweiler.

However, only our great Swede played this tournament and got the chance to score some valuable points and achievements. although a couple of losses against TraintoBusan spoiled his party somewhat.

Standings

As you may have noticed, GM MarveFleksnes only needed 12 games to reach the podium with a perfect win rate to boot.

Let's have a look at a topsy-turvy game between the aforementioned grandmaster and TalentOffer candidate LaraJ:

GM MarveFleksnes - WIM LaraJ (1-0)