Prospect v. Palatine (3): Guarding f7

What is the most vulnerable square at the start of the game? Here's a hint:

If you guessed the square occupied by the f-pawn, you were absolutely right. f2 and f7 are the squares upon which the earliest checkmates happen because they are only guarded by the kings. Protecting and exploiting these squares should be part of any opening strategy.

Palatine suffered on 6th Board and 8th Board due to the weakness of f7. Palatine's Steve Skara played the Two Knights Defense against Parth Patel on 6th and failed to properly counter 4.Ng5. Parth's inaccuracies allowed Steve to survive the opening, but his king was stuck in the middle. This proved to be his downfall. On the bottom board, Palatine's Jeff Leach left f7 completely unguarded when he castled queenside and overlooked Max Zwolenik's attack on the square. As sometimes happens in chess, a single oversight led to the complete unraveling of a position.

Prospect v. Palatine (2): Tough Decisions

The hardest decisions in chess often involve deciding what to do with an advantage once it is achieved. The path to victory frequently requires a player to convert an advantage in initiative or space advantage into a advantage in material or a middlegame advantage into an endgame advantage. Timing these conversions is often critical, but complicated by the fact that the advantage a player presently enjoys is always easier to appreciate than the one he hopes to enjoy.

The most interesting game of the match was Kevin Kostka's loss on 3rd Board against Palatine's K.C. Stenerson. K.C. neutralized Kevin's King's Gambit whereupon Kevin sacrificed a piece in an effort to salvage some initiative. In his eagerness to simplify the position, K.C. let Kevin obtain two powerful pawns deep in Black territory, but Kevin was unable to find the right point to convert that advantage into a strong ending.

On 2nd Board Palatine's Kyle Shymanik obtained a space advantage and superior piece activity against Andrew Berowski, but gave them up to quickly leading to a drawn ending. On 4th Board, Palatine's Ian Salyers obtained a space advantage and an extra pawn, but failed to take the measures necessary to neutralize Tejas Shah's counterplay and wound up overlooking a mate threat.