The problems for the leading seeds continued yesterday, and after two rounds of this year's Hastings Masters, only five of the 102 players can still boast a 100% score. They include three GMs, one IM, plus ....Mel Young. "Mel who?" I hear you ask. No, not the lead singer of a Spice Girls' tribute band, but a local Hastings chess club member, FIDE rating 1954! Mel joined the leaders by exploiting one of his trademark gambits, in this case the Morra Gambit, to upset Chris Briscoe, rated almost 300 points above him. Mel's reward is a pairing on board three today, with Black against top seed Vadim Malakhatko, a rating difference of precisely 642 points. We'll be cheering you on, Mel!
Top board saw India's Deep Sengupta produce the rarely-seen Veresov Opening, against grandmaster Mamedov. The latter more than equalized, and turned down a draw on move 20, but went fatally wrong around move 32-33, and was unceremoniously mated:
Here, Black could have played simply 31...Rxb2 32.Rg4 g6, when the computer is very unconvinced about White's attacking prospects. Instead, Mamedov chose the extravagant 31... h5!? 32.Qf3 Rxb2 33.Qxd5?! 33.Qxh5 is better. 33...Qg6? Now 33...Qa8 would have removed the "girlies" from the board, leaving Black with a winning ending. 34.e6 a4? Completing the collapse. 34...Rb1 was the last chance. 35.exf7+ Kh7 36.Ref1 a3 37.Rh4 Kh6 38.g4 1–0
The other winner on the top boards was Tahirov, who overcame Jovanka Houska.
Black had equalized without trouble, and now continued 23...e5 24.cxd5 cxd5 25.Ba6 Ba8? 25...Bxa6 26 Qxa6 e4 looks fine for Black. 26.Nb5 exd4?! Here, too, 26...e4 is better. 27.Nbxd4 Nc5 28.Bb5 Rf8 29.Nf5 Qe6 30.N3d4 Qe5 31.f4 Qe4 and now Tahirov completed the demolition job with 32.Rxc5! bxc5 33.Bd3. Now Black realized the high price to be paid for having opened the long diagonal of White's b2-bishop on move 26. 33...Qe8 loses to 34 Nxg7!. Jovanka chose to give up the queen with 33...cxd4 but lost after 34.Bxe4 dxe4 35.Bxd4 1–0
Pleasingly, the other two players to reach 2/2 are both English, namely Danny Gormally and Simon Williams. The former relieved Thomas Rendle of two pawns, with almost ridiculous ease, whilst Simon won yet another of his trademark Dutch Defence crushes. When the Black pawn gets to f3 in such positions, it is usually a bad sign for the White player!
Thompson,Ian D (2309) - Williams,Simon Kim (2475) [A81]
Hastings Masters (2.9), 29.12.2007
1.d4 e6 2.Nf3 f5 3.g3 Nf6 4.Bg2 Be7 5.0–0 0–0 6.Nbd2 Nc6 7.b3 Ne4 8.Bb2 Bf6 9.e3 Nxd2 10.Qxd2 d6 11.b4 Qe8 12.c4 e5 13.b5 Nd8 14.dxe5 dxe5 15.e4 f4
I imagine that round about here, Simon was already mentally chalking up the point.
16.Qd5+ Be6 17.Qc5 Bg4 18.Qd5+ Ne6 19.Qxb7 Qh5 20.Qa6 Rae8 21.Qa3 Be7 22.Qc3 Bc5 23.Nh4 f3 24.Nxf3 Total desperation. If 24.Bh1, White's only hope is that his opponent might losing on time, trying to decide whether 24...Nd4 or 24...Ng5 is the more decisive. Bxf3 25.Bxf3 Rxf3 26.Qxe5 Qf7 27.Kg2 0–1
A particularly welcome visitor to this year's Hastings is
Glenn Flear. The English GM was born and grew up in Leicester, where he was an
exact contemporary of Mark Hebden, but has now lived for many years in France.
Over the past 20 years, we have seen far too little of him in England, but, as
one of the true "nice guys" of the chess world, he is always a very
welcome guest. He has recently written a superb book called in which he
develops the concept of "nookie", ie. NQEs, or "Not Quite
Endgames".
[A small explanatory note, for the beneft of our
non-English readers: the word "nookie" is also English slang for sex
- slang, but not an obscenity or expletive! -ed. ]
By this he means those indeterminate positions, usually
queenless, but with more pieces on the board than one usually gets in the
positions which are covered in most endgame books. Gleen's book is destined to
become a classic, and yesterday he gave a small demonstration of his own "nookie"
ability:
Dickson,George A (2160) - Flear,Glenn C (2493) [C77]
Hastings Masters (2.13), 29.12.2007
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.Qe2 Be7 6.d3 b5 7.Bb3 0–0 8.0–0 d6 9.h3 Na5 10.Bg5 h6 11.Bd2 Nxb3 12.axb3 Bb7 13.b4 d5 14.exd5 Nxd5 15.c3 Re8 16.Na3 Bf6 17.Rfe1 Qd7 18.Qe4 c5 19.Qg4 Qxg4 20.hxg4 cxb4 21.cxb4 Nf4
With the better pawn structure, more active pieces and two bishops, this is obviously the kind of nookie that we all dream about. Glenn duly converted his advantage: 22.Bc3 Nxd3 23.Re3 Rad8 24.Rd1 Nf4 25.Rxd8 Rxd8 26.Bxe5 Bxe5 27.Rxe5 Nd3 28.Re7 Bxf3 29.gxf3 Nxb4 30.Re4 Rd1+ 31.Kg2 Nd3 32.Nc2 Rd2 33.Re8+ Kh7 0–1