Prospect v. Hoffman Estates

Although posting our match results here will help all the teams in the league scout each other, Don Barrett (Prospect High School's faculty chess coach) pointed out that it will make Prospect the easiest team to scout. I pointed out to him that as a volunteer coach, my loyalty is to the game itself rather than Prospect's chess team in particular. Should Prospect care to pay me, I might concern myself with its competitive advantage. Otherwise, I would rather post my analysis in the hopes of generating chess interest throughout the league.

In fact, Don likes the idea of posting the games and I am optimistic that it will not significantly impair Prospect's chances. The worst case would be that a Prospect player (or any other for that matter) repeats a dubious opening variation and his opponent is ready to take advantage of it. Since I think that I have done a decent job pointing out poor opening play, that would mean that the player failed to learn from history and suffered the natural consequences thereof. My idea of the best case is a player becoming familiar with the basic traps and typical piece and pawn deployments of a new opening after seeing that a potential opponent plays it. (An excellent book for these purposes is "Understanding the Chess Openings" by Sam Collins reviewed at ChessCafe.com.) Then both players get a better position out of the opening and play a more interesting game.

Here are the games from the October Prospect-Hoffman Estates match that Prospect won 39.5-28.5: 1st Board; 2nd Board; 3rd Board; 4th Board; 5th Board; 6th Board; 7th Board; 8th Board.