Games from the 2026 Harvey Lerman Florida State Championship
We are pleased to present 49 games from the Harvey Lerman Florida State Championship. The games are hosted in the ChessBase cloud at this link:
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Here is a link for downloading all the games in pgn format:
All of the games are annotated. Most annotations were created using ChessBase Tactical Analysis running Stockfish 15.1. A few of the games have additional annotations by the players or comments from our brilliancy prize judge. These are noted with credit to the source.
The games are organized as follows:
The first 3 games are our Brilliancy Prize Winners!
Next, we have 3 games receiving Honorable Mention in the Brilliancy Prize judging.
There follow the remaining games from the Master Section top 6 boards.
Lastly, we present a selection of additional games submitted by players.
Wojtkiewicz Brilliancy Prizes!!
GM Alex Wojtkiewicz (affectionately called "Wojo") played many times at the Space Coast Open, which is also organized by the Space Coast Chess Foundation (organizer of the 2026 State Championship). Wojo was also a regular part of our lecture series. Our brilliancy prizes are named in his memory. For the State Championship we offered three cash prizes totaling $350. IM Javad Maharramzade served as the Brilliancy Prize judge, his 20th appearance as our Judge, including 19 consecutive years in this role for the Space Coast Open. In addition to the cash prize winners IM Maharramzade awarded three honorable mentions.
Below are his introductory game summaries.
First Brilliancy Prize: $200 to Joshua Ramsey (Black vs. Shravan Laveti). Ramsey produced a spectacular attacking game: 27...f4!, 32...Bg4!, 33...Rf8!, culminating in the bishop sacrifice 34...Bxh3!, followed by the queen sacrifice 36...Qxh3!, leading to mate.
Second Brilliancy Prize: $100 to Lyric Gibbons (White vs. Glenn Goodman). Gibbons demonstrated imaginative attacking play, beginning with 15.Bd3!, making Black believe that he was simply missing the 16...Bxa3 tactic and losing a pawn. However, the spectacular intermezzo 17.Nxd5! suddenly put Black in a difficult situation, where he should have played 17...Qxd5, leading to a slightly worse endgame. Black instead played 17...Bxb2?, allowing White to build a devastating attack with 18.Nf6+! and 19.Qe4!
Third Brilliancy Prize: $50 to Zachary Thomas (White vs. Natalie Macon). Thomas was in dire straits through most of the middlegame but capitalized on Black's mistake 26...Bc2? by finding the beautiful 27.e6! and 28.Rxd2!, playing on the Qxg7# mating idea. He could have won immediately with 29.Rd8!, a deflection sacrifice, but later demonstrated that same concept anyway with 32.Rd2! and 33.Rd8!.
Honorable Mentions:
Arav Patel – Jean Marco Cruz: 29.Ng6!
Jacob Vassiliev – Mark Zachary: 12.Nxf7!
Alexander Gonzalez – Roger He: 39.Qxh6!
Special thanks to IM Maharramzade for serving as our Brilliancy Prize Judge.
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