"Let's have a good game…"

The moment the alarm rang, everyone shook hands with each other immediately, ready to start the game. Of course, before that, Sheva didn't forget to check his opponent's stats first. Even though he was confident, the boy still didn't want to get blindsided by the knowledge that he should know yet didn't due to his arrogance.

'System, scan his stats, please.' The boy muttered inwardly.

[DING! SCAN SUCCESSFUL!]

[Name: David Gavrilescu]

Attacking 83

Defense 83

Calculation 81

Strategy 79

Intuition 77

Time management 80

'A solid grandmaster, and by his stats, I can see that he has just broken through the GM threshold not a long time ago.' Sheva pondered. 'Then, let's see how he would approach a game against a lower-rated opponent like me. It would be better if he could be arrogant here, so that I could strike him from the dark.'

While his mind was still wandering around, the boy also started to make his move. Playing with the white piece, he didn't change his approach at all, still going for the king's pawn opening. In his mind, the 1.e4 opening had always worked well for him, so there was no need to change anything at all.

Seeing his opponent push the C pawn and initiate the Sicilian Defense, Sheva crooked one of his eyebrows slightly before his brain suddenly recalled a variation that he hadn't played for a long time. 'Let's go with the Alapin one.' He muttered to himself, pushing the C pawn one square forward to prepare for a breakthrough in the middle.

Even though this variation blocked Sheva's knight from developing into the natural C3 square, the boy felt like it was worth the risk, especially since he could achieve a solid, flexible position without trading a central pawn for a flank one. This was also probably the least variation that the black piece wanted in the Sicilian Defense, as the variation completely avoided the complex theory of the Open variation while also taking black out of their preferred, well-analyzed lines.

True enough, just in the second move of the game, Sheva had already managed to force David Gavrilescu to think. Even though it was only for two minutes, at least, that was a successful surprise in Sheva's book, especially since this was just the second move of the game. In the end, though, his opponent still managed to make the best move. However, Sheva did as well as the theory suggested, getting three strong pawns chained together in the middle of the board.

This alone was enough to satisfy the boy, as this was indeed his main purpose in going for this variation.

Time passed by, and pieces flew back and forth slowly. Both players still wanted to probe each other's position from afar, not wanting to commit to something outrageous yet. Even Sheva played pretty cautiously here. While yes, the boy wanted to push aggressively, he could still remember the glare from Medina, and he knew that once he messed this up, he wouldn't be able to survive the second encounter with that woman.

'No, I definitely cannot receive that again.' He shuddered at that thought.

So, yeah, in the end, he decided to play slowly, following the tempo that David Gavrilescu set in this game.

One hour had already passed, and it was still the 12th move of the game. Even though no action had happened yet, Sheva was pretty satisfied with his strong center. Coupled with the pair of bishops that stared straight at his opponent's kingside, he knew that the pressure was on the other side of the board.

*Author note: If you want to visualize the position better, check the comment below.

'Yeah, now, he has to make a pawn break, or his dark bishop and queen will never be able to get out for the rest of the game.' Sheva sighed a little, feeling relieved with the current situation on the board. 'He could do that with his D pawn, but that would only lock his white bishop on that corner forever. No, the only way to do that is with his F pawn, and then, I will take it with En Passant. His dark bishop will be able to breathe, but it will take a while to make that piece useful in this game. The initiative should be on my side right now.'

Knowing that he was in such a good position, Sheva started to relax a little bit, even to the point that he got up from the chair and strolled around to see how his teammates were doing right now. This should be the first time he did this in this tournament, since before today, the boy still wanted to act like a good boy, completely focusing on winning his game rather than checking how the others were doing.

'Hmm… I wonder how Master Susanto is faring there…'

Sheva went straight to board one, where the leaders of both teams were currently fighting against each other. Peeking at the scoresheet on the table, the boy recognized that Master Susanto went for the Nimzo-Indian. However, the situation on the board didn't look quite good for the man.

Bogdan-Daniel Deac basically had gathered all of his pieces on the queenside, trying to overwhelm the left flank and not giving Master Susanto any room to breathe. Not only that, even though the man managed to develop all of his minor pieces, they didn't do much on the board. Hell, if anything, all of their routes were completely blocked by all of the white's soldiers, ready to shoot them down once they entered the enemy's territory.

"Man… Master Susanto tries to force some exchanges, or his position would only get worse from this point forward…' Sheva muttered, calculating so many lines inside his head.

Then, his attention went to board two, where the IM Yoseph Taher was currently fighting against Constantin Lupulescu, a grandmaster with an ELO rating of 2628. Even though there was about a 200 rating difference between those two, Sheva didn't think that Taher would cower under the big name of his opponent. No, having known Taher even though only for a month, Sheva noticed that the man's style was the closest to him in the team.

They both were aggressive, bold, and some might even say reckless. However, one common thing here was that they always aimed for a win, never going the boring road of a quick draw or something like that. It might often backfire and worsen their situation, but this was the style that they held firmly in their heart.

So, when Sheva saw the position on board two exploded, the boy couldn't help but smile, appreciating the art that Taher tried to make there.

'Come on, Brother Taher! Show them who is the top dog here!'

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.