In Round 4, I had a tough game against Tom Manion. I was White in a Petroff Defense. He decided to defend the threat of checkmate in a very provocative way.
Black has just played 17...Re5. I responded with 18. f4, figuring that if the rook moves away, I will play Qxg7 checkmate. Then he surprised me with 18...c5! Oops, it's bad when you don't see anything. Now in damage control mode, I decided to spice up the position by sacrificing my Queen for a Rook and Knight with 19. Qc4 Nd6 20. Bf2 Qe7 21. fxe5 Nxc4 22. Bxc4, but that did not turn out well. I eventually got checkmated with no time on my clock, and 30 seconds on his clock. 0-1
In Round 5, I had the White pieces against Daniel Libby. The opening was an Accelerated Dragon. (Yes, I played the Open Sicilian)
We got into a Queen ending, where I had an extra pawn, but it was doubled. My guess is that with best play, it is a draw. Black has just gotten out of check by playing 32...Qf6. After thinking for some time, I evaluated the resulting King and Pawn ending to be a win for White, so the game continued 33. Qxf6+ Kxf6 34. Kd5 Kf5 35. c5 bxc5 36. Kxc5 Kf4 37. Kd5 Kg3 38. c4 Kxg2 39. c5 Kxh3 40. c6 g5 41. c7 g4 42. c8=Q h5 43. Ke4 Kg3 44. Qc3+ Kh2 45. Kf4 Kh1 46. Qe1+ 1-0
Perhaps 32...Kf7 would have held the draw?
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