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11th Monarch Assurance Isle of Man Chess International 28 Sept - 6 Oct 2002
Round 1 - 28 September
John Saunders reports: The 11th Monarch Assurance Chess International got underway at 1330 hrs this afternoon at the Cherry Orchard Aparthotel, Port Erin, Isle of Man. Herewith, the first round results. We also have the games in PGN; a report of the day's play will follow tomorrow morning.
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Defending champion GM Mikhail Ulibin (left) faces England's IM Simon Williams
Round 1 (2002.09.28) Ulibin, Mikhail - Williams, Simon 1/2 66 A80 Dutch defence Tyomkin, Dimitri - Epishin, Vladimir 1/2 22 A46 Queen's pawn Dautov, Rustem - Peralta, Fernando 1-0 55 A90 Dutch defence Kunte, Abhijit - Shulman, Yuri 1/2 16 C00 French Neverov, Valeriy - Grunberg, Mihai 1-0 23 A80 Dutch defence Palliser, Richard - Sulskis, Sarunas 1/2 47 E54 Nimzo Indian Cioara, Andrei Nestor - Fridman, Daniel 0-1 26 B09 Pirc; Austrian Rotstein, Arkadij - Ledger, Andrew 1/2 65 A11 English 1 c4 Ansell, Simon - Stocek, Jiri 1/2 85 B51 Sicilian Zapata, Alonso - Welling, Gerard 1-0 32 B01 Scandinavian Collins, Sam - Goloshchapov, Alexander 0-1 77 B85 Sicilian Lalic, Bogdan - Gladyszev, Oleg 1/2 15 E68 Kings Indian Hinks-Edwards, Thom - Hebden, Mark 0-1 40 C91 Ruy Lopez Kogan, Artur - Pert, Richard G 1/2 45 B25 Sicilian Closed Brady, Stephen - Felgaer, Ruben 1/2 21 B22 Sicilian 2 c3 Ward, Christopher - Cooper, Lawrence 1-0 48 E43 Nimzo Indian Daly, Colm - Miezis, Normunds 1/2 66 B42 Sicilian Ellison, Derek George - Orr, Mark J L 0-1 62 C02 French Advance Hanley, Craig - Goodger, Martyn 1-0 32 A87 Dutch defence Lutton, J.Ezra - Dougherty, Michael 1-0 22 B23 Sicilian Closed Cafolla, Peter - Harborne, Matthew 0-1 34 E20 Nimzo Indian Shepherd, Michael - Marchand, Francois 0-1 35 A52 Benoni Palus, Ryszard - Ormsby, Alan 1-0 41 D10 Slav defence Purton, Ben - Rayner, Francis 0-1 37 B23 Sicilian Closed Grant, Alan - Bennion, David 1-0 59 A20 English 1 c4 e5 Lutton, E Josiah - Hutchinson, Norman 1-0 29 B10 Caro-Kann Vuilleumier, Alex - Hanley, James L 1-0 61 B52 Sicilian Spanton, Timothy - Gordon, Stephen J 0-1 40 E20 Nimzo Indian Blackburn, Jonathan L - Waugh, Jonathon C 1-0 47 D58 Queen's gambit Kelly, David - Fox, Anthony 1/2 22 C30 King's Gambit Van Kemenade, Rudy - Cheshire, Paul L 1-0 41 C92 Ruy Lopez Burrows, Martin - Bye 1/2
Breaking The Code
This year's Monarch Assurance line-up doesn't feature many household
names, but more than makes up for that with strength in depth. 23 nations
are represented amongst the 64 players lining up for the open tournament,
with many players making their UK debuts. The field includes 19 grandmasters;
so many, in fact, that the accelerated pairings for the first round included
more than one all-grandmaster clash. As a result it was desperately hard
fought with many games going down to the wire. It looks like we are in
for another attritional event where the last man left standing takes the
pot. And I can say "man" without offending anyone's sensibilities
as unfortunately we do not have any female competitors this year.
There were no significant surprises in terms of lower-rated players beating
their superiors, though one or two came close. Nevertheless we saw some
resolute chess from the younger IMs, several of whom held much higher
rated opponents to draws.
IM Simon Williams of England faced last year's champion Mikhail Ulibin
of Russia. Simon has had an up and down summer in terms of form. It started
with a total disaster in the Smith and Williams Young Masters tournament
in July where he finished last. He then improved a little in the British
Championship where he scored 5/9 before withdrawing. But earlier in September
he got back to his best with a second place in the Budapest 'First Saturday'
GM tournament, beating all three grandmasters and getting close to a GM
norm. Simon brought some of his Budapest form with him and gave Mikhail
Ulibin a very tough work-out, with the Russian requiring some brinkmanship
to keep his position afloat before turning the tables and applying pressure
to Simon's position. In the end both players deserved their half point.
Ulibin-Williams.
Incidentally, while we're on the subject of the Budapest event, the performance
of one Nguyen Ngoc Truongson of Vietnam in a category 3 IM tournament
there caught the eye: 11/12 for a TPR of 2708. And he's only aged 11!
Tyomkin-Epishin was a fairly short draw (one of very few this round),
but Dautov-Peralta was a tough game. The Argentinian fought hard to keep
Dautov at bay but slipped up near the end, allowing his opponent's queen
and bishop to get to his king. Dautov-Peralta.
It
was a very bad day for the tournament's two Romanians, IMs Andrei Nestor
Cioara (pictured left) and Mihai Grunberg (right), and I'm
not just talking about the chess. Thinking that they were going into 'Euroland',
they had turned up in the Isle of Man with their pockets filled with Euros.
Note to other unwary tourists to this part of the world: the UK and the
Isle of Man are not yet at home to 'Mr Euro', and, by the way, we still
drive on the left and like our beer at room temperature. Having found
that their cash was just so much 'Monopoly money' this side of the English
Channel, the two Romanians were both short-changed at the board as well.
Grunberg was turned over in 23 moves by Ukrainian grandmaster Valery Neverov,
while Cioara only lasted three more moves against Latvia's Daniel Fridman.
Grunberg played a dubious Dutch Defence and never really got out of the
opening. Cioara played a superficially promising piece sacrifice against
Fridman, but the Latvian proved that he could get to Cioara's back rank
before the Romanian could deliver his 'mating attack'. Neverov-Grunberg and Cioara-Fridman (with notes).
As
the tournament's game input man, I should put in a special mention for
the game between Colm Daly of Ireland and Normunds Miezis (pictured
left) of Latvia. If ever there was a world championship for keying
in chess games, the scoresheets from a match between these two should
sort out the real code-breakers from the also-rans. I'm guessing here,
but Colm's score sheet looked like it had been written in ancient Sumerian
cuneiform writing, while Normunds did a nice line in Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Even those war-time code-breakers at Bletchley Park or the guy who figured
out the Minoan Linear B script would have found the two Daly-Miezis scoresheets
a bit of a challenge.
Stewart Reuben has a nice anecdote about indecipherable scores. While working as arbiter at a big London tournament (remember when we used to have those?), he noticed that Korchnoi's scoresheet would be completely unreadable for the bulletin editor. After the game, he asked the great man if he would be so kind as to write his score out again. "Yes, of course, no problem," said Viktor, before adding "but you won't be able to read the copy either!".
Anyway, here in Port Erin, I don't have access to an Enigma machine or
the Rossetta Stone to help in deciphering handwriting, but I do have the
world's best chess code-cracking software - Fritz 7. It was a challenge,
but with my trusty chess-hound sniffing out the likeliest moves and some
desperate comparisons between the two sets of hieroglyphs, I think I finally
decoded the Daly-Miezis game. It proved to be worth the trouble as Colm
Daly extricated himself from what looked a likely loss with some shrewd
endgame play. Daly-Miezis.
Two
other Irishmen were embroiled in hard fights with strong players. Stephen
Brady lined up against the current champion of Argentina. Ruben Felgaer (pictured right) is not yet a GM, but since taking his national
championship in March (incidentally this was after a tie-break match with
Fernando Peralta who is also playing in the Monarch), he has been very
impressive on his extended tour of Europe this summer. He scored 8½/9
for an amazing TPR of 2810 at a tournament in Aarhus in July and followed
this up with a share of first place in the very strong Politiken Cup,
taking the scalps of Nick Pert and this tournament's no.1 seed, Vladimir
Epishin, in the process. Stephen Brady was not intimidated by any of this;
perhaps he was blissfully unaware of the Argentinian's credentials. He
played a very enterprising exchange sacrifice which enabled him to take
a vice-like grip on the position. But discretion proved to be the better
part of valour and an Irish peace offer was accepted on move 21.
Before the late Tony Miles arrived on the UK chess scene (and how we all miss him), a 'half point in the hand' against a grandmaster was regarded as better than a 'full point in the bush'. The young Irish champion Sam Collins, to his considerable credit, is more of a Tony Miles in these circumstances and he turned down a draw when he felt he had a good chance of winning against Ukrainian GM Alexander Goloshchapov (pictured left). True, he soon managed to win the exchange but at too great a cost in pawns. He lost back the exchange and it came down to a king and pawn versus king and two pawns ending, but one which is a theoretical draw. However, Sam knew that he would be subjected to a stern test of his knowledge of corresponding squares as Goloshchapov's king weaved back and forth across the board trying to outfox Sam's king. Unfortunately for Sam, the grandmaster setting the questions was less friendly than the UK's 'A' Level examiners: in this sort of test you either get all the questions right or you fail. Sam got one move wrong and that was enough to flunk the exam. Collins-Goloshchapov.
There
were several other games of note. Richard Palliser scored a nail-biting
draw against GM Sulskis of Lithuania. Both players were in time trouble
and a number of tactical possibilities may have been overlooked just before
the time control. It was very exciting to watch. Palliser-Sulskis.
The two Lutton brothers scored wins, with Ezra almost emulating his younger
brother Josiah's big sacrifice from the Major Open. Not a Russian grandmaster
scalp this time, but a much higher rated Canadian FM, and the sacrifice
was made on the same square (g6). Lutton-Dougherty.
Alonso Zapata (pictured right) finished his game against Gerard
Welling very nicely; in fact, the more I look at it, the more I think
this was the game of the day. If you only play through one game from today's
round, make it this one. Zapata-Welling.
We have two Manx players in the field this year, Alan Ormsby and Jonathon
Waugh. Both found the going too tough for them. Jonathon soldiered on
a piece down for nothing before trying a humorous little stalemate cheapo
involving leaving his rook en prise. Unfortunately for him, his opponent
had guessed his punch-line and was ready with a 'one-liner' of his own;
he put a knight en prise in reply. And he who laughs last, gets the full
point. Blackburn-Waugh.
Having mangled two traditional British proverbs in the course of the one
report, I think it is time for me to shut up (until tomorrow).
©2002 Text and Photos - John Saunders. Not to be used or translated without permission