CHESS #602

The Jermuk Grand Prix is heading for a tight finish. After 10 rounds, Ivanchuk, Leko and Kasimdzhanov share the lead on 6.5 points with Aronyan and Alekseev on 6. All three leaders are unbeaten. Gelfand and Karjakin have plus scores with 5.5 while Pavel Eljanov is on 50 per cent with 5 points.

As a brief look at the above suggests, there are at least five people with a serious chance of winning or tying for first place. With just three rounds to go, it's still anybody’s tournament. Obviously the home crowd will be rooting for the top seed, Aronyan.

Several interesting team matches were also on display. Russia faces China in two 5-player double-round Scheveningen Team matches, where each member of one squad plays all the members of the other squad twice with alternate colours. Halfway through, the Russian men lead 13-12 while the Chinese women lead 13.5-11.5.

The Howard Staunton Memorial in London saw the UK beat the Netherlands in a similar 5 player double Scheveningen format. The victory at 26.5-23.5 was entirely on the back of an 8/10 score from Nigel Short. No other UK player managed a plus score.

The HSM also included a category IX tournament The legendary Jan Timman, who is 58, won with 7/9 ahead of the “super-legend”, Viktor Korchnoi 6. The 78-year-old Korchnoi played uncompromising chess.

The Zurich Chess Club’s 200th Anniversary Jubilee Open saw Boris Avrukh and Alexander Areshchenko sharing first on 7.5 /9. The latter took the tie-break. Top-seeded Morozevich lost to Avrukh in the last round. Alexey Dreev and Viktor Mikhalevski shared 3-4 on 7 points. Sandipan Chanda and G.N. Gopal shared 5-23 place with Moro (and 15 others) on 6.5. On Saturday, the all-star array of Anand, Karpov, Kasparov, Korchnoi, Kramnik, Spassky, Ponomariov and Topalov will play a monster 200 game simultaneous.

The diagram, WHITE TO PLAY AND DRAW, is a study by Djaja. The late GM Jan-Hein Donner wrote that he showed the position to Paul Keres among others, who failed to find the solution. White loses after the plausible 1.Nf5+ Kd8 2.Nxd4 a2 3.Nc2 Rb2 and may retain drawing chances with 3.Rb7 a1Q 4.Rxb6 Qxd4 5.a7.

The solution starts 1.Nf5+ Kd8 2.Ra8+Kxd7 3.a7 Ra4 4.Rg8 Rba6. This position was shown to several 2700-plus players recently by ChessBase editor Frederic Friedel. Most struggled to find the key 5. Nh6, which sets up a perpetual rook-check along the g-file and 5. -Rxh6 6.a8=Q is a trivial draw.

The white rook is protected except at g5,g7 and Kt controls f5,f7 prevents the black king attacking either g5,g7. Rybka and Fritz find the solutions in under a minute by elimination. Every legal move apart from Nh6 obviously loses.