Greetings Chess Players. My name is Chris Torres and this is my daily chess musing for Sunday July 4, 2021.
For those of us in America, the Fourth of July is Independence Day. But, since this is a chess musing, rather than talk about Uncle Sam I will be presenting a chess game played by Grandmaster Sam.
Sam Shankland is an American Grandmaster who grew up, like myself, in Northern California. In fact, he is five-time California State Chess Champion, won the U.S. Chess Championship in 2018 and has been awarded the medals while representing Team USA at two Chess Olympiads. But we aren’t going to look at those performances today. Instead, let’s look at a beautiful game GM Sam Shankland played on July 4th, 2013.
In early July of 2013, Sam Shankland was participating in the 41st World Open in Arlington, Virginia. Its large prize fund attracted a strong field of titled players. GM Sam Shankland was black in the fourth round against FM Taibur Rahman. And while Arlington is known to have an extravagant Fourth of July fireworks show, Shankland put on an amazing display of tactical pyrotechnics of his own with the black pieces. Explosive tactics and sparkling accuracy allowed GM Sam Shankland defeated his opponent in just 24 moves! Let’s see how he did it.