A crowd of over 34 people watched, as a total of 8 women and girls competed in the tournament. It all came down to the final game, with Michelle Chen and JB Franklin battling for the 1st Place trophy.

JB, who perennially finishes around second place, finally got over the hump to win with a 3-0 undefeated performance.

When I started watching in the middle of the game I felt that the position was unclear, with both sides pushing king side attacks. I was completely unaware until later, that JB was a queen up. Perhaps she had won Michelle’s Queen very early in the opening. But Michelle still had chances with possible pawn advances to directly assault JB’s king position. After Chen made a passive knight retreat, JB placed her Queen aggressively on the rook file attacking a piece. Chen protected the piece and attacked the queen at the same time. This crucial point of the game was to me the determining factor.

JB needed to decide whether to...

1. Risk her queen's safety by being in a corner surrounded by enemy pieces.
2. Retreat all the way back to her side of the board and be completely safe.
3. Fight her demons of wanting to move fast and being too overly aggressive and make the proper move.

She decided on option #3, and for the rest of the game, to use more patience. She moved the queen up a square to keep a constant queen presence and attack on the pieces. JB was eventually able to bring in another piece. Then a trade, a capture, and win of a free piece, led to the destruction of Michelle's king defenders and an eventual well-deserved championship win for JB.

-Duane Larkin