By Assi Philosoph
Saturday the 4th was the day of the blitz tournament at the Maccabiah, an event open to all players and played in 9 rounds in the Swiss system, with a rate of play of 3 min + 2 sec increment. The Herzliya arbiters duo, Idan Lavi and Binyamin Levy, were great hosts for the tournament, keeping the event flowing with a friendly atmosphere and quick pairings, which allowed the players to catch the World Cup match France-Paraguay on time.
IM Yannay Ben Ari took the gold medal in the tournament, even after arriving only from the second round onwards because of the late hour on Shabbat. He received a half point bye, and from that went onto a run of 7 out of 8, securing first place with 7.5 out of 9 and 2000 NIS. Ben Ari lost only to the second-place GM Yevgeny Alkseev, who also finished with 7.5, but lost in the tiebreaks, finishing with the silver medal and a respectable prize of 1300 NIS.
The bronze medal went to GM Viktor Mikhalevski (900 NIS), who finished with 7 points, with a better tiebreak than IM Benny Aizenberg. Mikhalevski secured his place on the podium after an important win in the last round against GM Avital Boruchovsky, who was leading the tournament after 6 rounds but had a luckless finish with 3 losses.
The best U2000 rating prize of 400 NIS went to the talented 12-year-old boy Daniel Freifeld with 5 points. Unfortunately, there were no female players at all in the blitz section, so the best female prize of 400NIS went back to the cashier.
From left: Lavi, Alekseev, Slav, Ben Ari, Mikhalevski and Levy
Coming back to the main events, the 4th round of the closed tournament brought a lot of drama in the game Bulmaga – Menahem.
Bulmaga – Menahem
4th round: Closed tournament Maccabiah 5.7.2026
White went on an adventure with the rook, who got stuck on the g5 square. Menahem set up a trap playing 26…e4, which was accepted after 27.fxe4? (27.Nxe4 Bxe4 28.fxe4 Qxe4 and the game is still on).
After the pawn takes the pawn, the rook on g5 loses its grip: 27…Qe7!. Now there is no Rg4. The game continued 28.Re5 Qf6 29.Rd5. Black is winning, but Bulmaga, with a fighting spirit, somehow managed to create a pawn avalanche, after a queens’ exchange, and to get the following diagram position after 51.Kd6:
The game continued 51…Bxe4 52.Nxe4 Rxe4 53.Rc1 Re6+! (only move) 54. Kc5 and after repeating the position twice, Black understandably, after having a rook up position, tried to win with 57…Rb2. But, sadly this lost to 58.c7 Rb6+ 59.Rc6 and there was no way to stop promotion.
With the win, Bulmaga took the lead with 3 points, after Streslov had gained his first point against the leader, Emanuel. Gladyszev also had his first win against Zakin. And the games Dvoirys – Azoulay, Sasson – Nevednichy ended in a draw.
In the open tournament, the leaders Gruenfled and Weber drew on the first board, and Segev won against Ashkenazy on the second one, leaving no player with 100% points. In the youth section, 2 players are leading with 3 out of 3: Nataniel Alexey Bedyovkin (ISR) and Adam Darack (USA), and they face each other tomorrow.