Round 4 was a bad round for the SA teams. The women had to play the higher ranked Norwegians, which were less strong than Latvia though. Alas Anzel lost quickly: she didn’t find good squares for her pieces, lost a pawn, and went down without a fight after that. Melissa got the English attack against the Najdorf, but before she could start her own attack her king was already under severe pressure. She had to give up an exchange but that didn’t save the game. Still there was hope of a tie, since Jenine and Monique had good positions. Jenine could have won a pawn in the endgame, but instead she sacrificed one, lost another one and after that the game. Monique in a quiet Italian game with white had to choose to get a position with white knights on g4 and h5 either with or without queens. Without queens she could followup with h4 (attacking the hook on g5) and that would have been very strong. With queens she hoped to get a king’s attack, but that didn’t happen and in the end she even lost. So 4-0 for the Norwegians, but it was closer than the result suggests.
The men team had to play Pakistan, which are lower ranked than SA. After playing the USA it takes a mental switch to play a relatively weak team, and the level of play was clearly lower than in round 3. Kenny with black won a good game though. After taking a pawn and another pawn his opponent got a dangerous attack, but Kenny defended and won the game with his material advantage. Henry was under pressure in the middlegame, but after some mistakes by his opponent got chances to win, which he unfortunately didn’t take. The same happened to Johannes: after weak play in the opening (a c3-sicilian) he was a little worse, but complications started by the opponent leaded to position where Johannes had a healty pawn more. But with little time on the clock he played some weak moves which resulted in a drawn endgame. Daniel played very well so far in his games with white, but this round with black he played weakly. In an English (reversed Sicialian dragon) his opponent got everything white can wish for. A little later white had two bishops and two pawns against rook and knight, and Daniel couldn’t hold the position. So the score became 2-2, we had hoped for more of course.
