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By Matt Barrett
The Arch Bishops are RUTHLESS! The Bishops went Snake hunting in Carolina country, and caught a Cobra! IM Priyadharshan Kannappan, current leader in the League MVP race, displayed his immense calculation skill with a nice finish against FM Kassa Korley. IM Leon Bregadze enforced his will with an unstoppable pawn roller versus FM Ron Simpson. GM Ben Finegold played an insane game against IM Jonathan Schroer. Be sure to check the game with your chess engine just to watch the machine lose its mind!
The Arch Bishops are currently in 2nd place in the Western Division. Not only is the team destined for playoff glory, but this season represents the best results for the team in league history!
Week 6: Saint Louis Arch Bishops vs. New Jersey Knockouts
by Matt Barrett
IM Priyadharshan Kannappan continued his USCL dominance on Tuesday night against New Jersey, this time taking out three-time U.S. Champion GM Joel Benjamin (and with the black pieces, no less!) The rest of the team cemented the victory with some big wins of their own. IM Levan Bregadze noticed that his opponent, the veteran IM Kapengut had migrated all of his pieces to the queenside and saw an opportunity to sacrifice with Nf5! The result was a completely exposed Black King on the naked g and h files. The Black pieces were cut off from support and Kapengut was forced to resign in the face of impending mate.
It was a familiarly humble Ben Finegold who had observed in advance of the match that he was "the only player on the team who had any chance of losing". After establishing an advantage and a comfortable game against GM Alex Stripunsky, Ben simplified and settled for an easy draw to await the results of the other games. While we were watching the remaining encounters, Matt Larson played a surprising and obviously unsound Knight sacrifice. We discussed the question of how easy it would turn out to be to find the moves White needed to defend and there was little question that White was simply winning. Nevertheless, Matt had seen that his opponent had much the worse of the clock situation, with under 20 minutes to find ways to consolidate his vulnerable King, and gambled that the sacrifice might be difficult to figure out under pressure at the board. Nobody was optimistic until White tried the equally stunning h4??, which altered Stockfish analysis from White up 3.00 to Black up 5.00. Generally a swing of this kind would be unheard of, but in a complicated tactical position (and especially under time pressure) anything is possible. At that point it became clear that the Arch Bishops would win the match, especially given that Kannappan had 40 minutes to Benjamin's 1 or 2 minutes in a roughly equal position and that Bregadze was similarly solid in his game.
Kannappan has been on quite a roll recently. In his last four encounters with Grandmasters, he is 4-0, including 3 wins in the USCL! If these were all rated encounters, they would represent a ridiculous 2900+ performance rating for a player who was virtually unknown in the United States until his arrival at Lindenwood University this Fall. Overall, Kannappan has scored 5.5/6 in the USCL and is clearly the runaway frontrunner for league MVP honors. I can't think of a better city for a new international chess player to come to than Saint Louis. As Priyadharshan himself said "Coming to Saint Louis has been the best thing for my professional and academic careers. It is a great city for chess."
As it turns out, the rating difference between East and West was not the determining factor in the result of the match. When the games have to be played at the board it is often the will to win that scores the point. Despite being out-rated by 100 points on Board 1, 200 points on Board 2, and almost 200 points on Board 4, Saint Louis won this match going away. Prior to the season, predicting that Matt Larson (listed at 1918) would have 2 wins over players 2100 and 2200+ might have sounded unlikely. That Saint Louis would be able to outperform some of its higher-rated editions from previous seasons should have seemed more than overly optimistic. To everyone's surprise, the team has the best record in its history, has an MVP-caliber performance from its new IM superstar, and sits in a solid position at 2nd place in the West.
