Master Report 4

The fourth round saw the tournament leaders paired, but the players decided to save some energy with a quick draw. The tournament schedule is indeed quite tight with nine games in six days. Actually, GM Jha Sriram was much better prepared for IM Thomas Willemze's Spanish Four Knights than Ryan Harper was in round two, and in fact got a large advantage right from the opening. Afterwards, he probably regretted not having played on.

FM Dewperkash Gajadin must be praised for his enterprising attitude towards the game, but IM Luis Lazaro Aguero Jimenez calmly neutralised all attacking aspirations and went on to win. WGM Alina L’Ami, who travels around the world a lot, with and without her Dutch husband GM Erwin L'Ami, possibly paid the price for her busy schedule of late. Against FM Ryan Harper she build up quite a promising position from an irregular Slav opening, only to blunder everything away in a few moves time.

IM Jose Luis Vilela De Acuna build up a dominating position against Romario Sanches with a lot of patience, winning the game by purely positional means. IM Gerardo Lebredo Zaragoitia also showed his positional skills by slowly but surely outplaying FM Roger Matoewi. The Surinam players may be suffering so far, but the experience gained in this tournament will surely pay off in the future.

1st Srefidensi standings after round 4:
1-4 Sriram, Aguero Jimenez, Willemze, Harper (3)
5 Vilela De Acuna (2.5)
6-7 L'Ami, Lebredo Zaragoitia (2)
8 Matoewi (1)
9 Saches (0.5)
10 Gajadin (0)

IM Merijn van Delft