BritBase.Info - British Chess Game Archive
11th Monarch Assurance Isle of Man Chess International 28 Sept - 6 Oct 2002
Round 4 - 1 October
John Saunders reports: Round Four Results
Alonso Zapata regains the sole lead with 3½/4, ahead of
Ward, Epishin, Kogan, Dautov, Miezis, Fridman, Stocek, Gladyszev, Sulskis
and Burrows on 3
Round 4 (2002.10.01) Miezis, Normunds - Dautov, Rustem 1/2 39 A21 English 1 c4 e5 Goloshchapov, Alexander - Zapata, Alonso 0-1 68 B42 Sicilian Felgaer, Ruben - Ward, Christopher 1/2 31 B78 Sicilian Dragon Epishin, Vladimir - Palliser, Richard 1-0 37 E97 Kings Indian Main line Fridman, Daniel - Hinks-Edwards, Thom 1-0 62 A96 Dutch defence Sulskis, Sarunas - Brady, Stephen 1-0 48 C05 French Tarrasch Gladyszev, Oleg - Rotstein, Arkadij 1-0 55 E39 Nimzo Indian Stocek, Jiri - Hanley, Craig 1-0 71 A25 English 1 c4 e5 Ledger, Andrew - Lalic, Bogdan 1/2 12 A24 English 1 c4 e5 Cooper, Lawrence - Kogan, Artur 0-1 52 B22 Sicilian 2 c3 Daly, Colm - Tyomkin, Dimitri 1/2 119 D85 Grunfeld Burrows, Martin - Kunte, Abhijit 1-0 42 B44 Sicilian Marchand, Francois - Ulibin, Mikhail 0-1 74 A90 Dutch defence Rayner, Francis - Neverov, Valeriy 0-1 34 B50 Sicilian Shulman, Yuri - Palus, Ryszard 1-0 38 A16 English 1 c4 Hebden, Mark - Grant, Alan 1-0 28 A46 Queen's pawn Grunberg, Mihai - Blackburn, Jonathan L 1-0 31 E18 Queen's indian Williams, Simon - Fox, Anthony 1-0 31 D37 Queen's Gambit Hutchinson, Norman - Ansell, Simon 1-0 23 B22 Sicilian 2 c3 Welling, Gerard - Ellison, Derek George 1-0 41 B25 Sicilian Closed Pert, Richard G - Lutton, E Josiah 1-0 37 C02 French Advance Orr, Mark J L - Van Kemenade, Rudy 1-0 50 A43 Queen's pawn Peralta, Fernando - Cafolla, Peter 0-1 37 A09 Reti (1 Nf3) Gordon, Stephen J - Cioara, Andrei Nestor 1-0 63 E45 Nimzo Indian Dougherty, Michael - Hanley, James L 1-0 43 A48 Queen's pawn Harborne, Matthew - Collins, Sam 0-1 43 B22 Sicilian 2 c3 Bennion, David - Vuilleumier, Alex 1-0 25 B66 Sicilian Goodger, Martyn - Lutton, J.Ezra 0-1 31 B00 1 e4 Irregular Cheshire, Paul L - Shepherd, Michael 0-1 24 B57 Sicilian Waugh, Jonathon C - Purton, Ben 1-0 13 B33 Sicilian Sveshnikov Spanton, Timothy - Cross, Glenn 1/2 61 E20 Nimzo Indian Ormsby, Alan - Kelly, David 1/2 22 C13 French Classical
Viva Zapata
Ay, caramba! Once again Alonso Zapata has taken over as sole leader at the 11th Monarch Assurance Isle of Man International. Alonso is one tough hombre and after rebuffing a premature attack from Alexander Goloshchapov he whipped up a deadly counterattack which soon netted queen for rook and bishop. It took time to finish off but there was never much doubt that he would overcome. Goloshchapov-Zapata.
Arbiter David Sedgwick reminded me of one of Alonso's claims to fame: beating Vishy Anand in six moves. He performed this incredible feat at Biel 1988 when Vishy was an 18-year-old "ordinary" grandmaster rather than the super-grandmaster that he is today. You want to see the moves? Here goes: Zapata-Anand - 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nf6 3 Nxe5 d6 4 Nf3 Nxe4 5 Nc3 Bf5?? 6 Qe2! 1-0. The problem is that if Black plays 6...Qe7, then 7 Nd5 forces him off the e-file, and if he plays more or less anything else, then 7 d3 will win a piece. An amusing postscript (or rather 'prescript') to this game is that Vishy was following a previous game, Miles-Christiansen, San Francisco 1987, where 5...Bf5 had been followed by 6 Nxe4? and a draw was agreed on move 20. If there had been such a thing as 'Mega Database 1988' and laptop computers back in those days, Vishy's pre-match database scan would have picked up the game Saleh-Rush, Lucerne Olympiad 1982, where 6 Qe2 was played and White won quickly. As well as these two games, the 2002 Mega Database lists four subsequent instances of 5...Bf5?? with similarly dire outcomes.
The
other top board games ended in draws, although there was real fighting
chess played all the way down the order, apart from the very brief game
between Bogdan Lalic and Andrew Ledger. There is a spirit of friendly
rivalry between Chris Ward (left) and Ruben Felgaer (right)
after the pair of them donned their countries' football shirts for their
Politiken Cup game in Copenhagen during the World Cup. That game ended
in a draw and so did this one but it was a full-blooded encounter. It
looked like Ruben's big attack might have crashed through had he interpolated
25 c3 but you need a silicon brain to sift through all Black's possible
counter-chances. As it was, the rook sacrifice was only good enough for
perpetual check. Felgaer-Ward.
Top seed Vladimir Epishin (left and down a bit) must be quite
an intimidating man to sit opposite at the board. If anything, he is even
more frightening in the refreshment area, where he threatens to shorten
your life expectancy via constant inhalation of smoke from the carton-loads
of cigarettes that he gets through. Today it was Richard Palliser's turn
to take him on, but he succumbed to a bad bishop versus good knight middlegame
scenario. Epishin-Palliser.
Craig Hanley had a long fight against the amiable Czech GM Jiri Stocek which came down to a rook versus bishop and pawn endgame. In the final position, Craig resigned in a position where the five-piece endgame tablebase shows that he can still draw with 71...Be3, but he was short of time anyway and his practical chances of finding a precise series of moves to reach the draw were probably quite slim. Stocek-C.Hanley.
Further
down the order, round four produced a rich crop of surprises with sub-2200
players inflicting some stunning defeats on the titled players. Leicester
player Martin Burrows (right), who had downed an IM in round three,
followed up by beating a GM in round four. Again, this was no fluke but
the result of some resolute and self-confident play to put the grandmaster
under pressure. Rather than passively defend, Kunte opted to give up a
pawn and then the exchange. For a while this combative strategy seemed
to be bearing fruit as Kunte's pieces invaded on the queenside, but he
then tried a tactic which misfired horribly and lost a piece. Burrows
had no difficulty in finishing off, and he now finds himself on the dizzy
heights of 3/4. Burrows-Kunte.
Veteran
English amateur Norman Hutchinson' s photo (left) just about sums
up his day. The smile shows him in a good mood but the clenched fists
show he was ready for a fight. He celebrated his first appearance in the
FIDE rating list (at 2189) that morning by beating IM Simon Ansell. The
players reached a fairly innocuous position from a c3 Sicilian opening
when Simon's knight lurched to the edge of the board (and we all know
the old cliché, don't we). This was a serious mistake allowing
Norman to launch an attack on f7. Simon could just about have defended
had he interposed his rook but he instead chose the queen. This was a
horrid blunder allowing Norman to check on the back rank and capture the
queen. Hutchinson-Ansell.
The third of the trio of English giant-killers was Stephen Gordon (right).
The 16-year-old from Manchester took the initiative and converted it onto
strong positional pressure against the Romanian IM Cioara. Having control
of the important d-file, Stephen turned down a draw offer and built up
steady pressure against the weak points in Cioara's position. Eventually
the Romanian cracked and Stephen found a very strong knight sacrifice
to break through to Black's king. More work was needed to finish off after
he had netted material but Stephen never lost control of the board at
any point: an extraordinarily mature performance. On the evidence of this
game Stephen has a real future ahead of him. Gordon-Cioara.
Ireland's Peter Cafolla also scored an upset, beating IM Fernando Peralta. It was soon clear that Peralta had not recovered from the trauma of his loss to Martin Burrows on the previous day. He played a positively suicidal opening for White, squandering a number of pawns for no obvious reason. Cafolla replied coolly and sensibly, covering all possible attacking breaks. Peralta's increasingly desperate play involved sacrificing pieces but, having utterly failed to find any compensation, he resigned. Peralta-Cafolla.
There
was nearly another sensation as French FM Francois Marchand (left)
had Mikhail Ulibin in all sorts of trouble. Marchand emerged from complications
with a material advantage of bishop, knight for a rook, but instead of
winning an easy pawn he blundered a piece away. Even then it was far from
easy for Ulibin to win; but Marchand's disappointment at losing the piece
was reflected in some further mistakes. Marchand-Ulibin.
Elsewhere, Wales' David Bennion played a very attractive tactic to win his game against the young Swiss player Alex Vuilleumier (Bennion-Vuilleumier), and there was the first win for the home contingent when Manxman Jonathon Waugh pinned Ben Purton's queen against his king (Waugh-Purton). All in all it was a quite delightful day's chess with only six draws in 32 games. And the draws were pretty good value too, especially Colm Daly's rugged defence with two rooks against GM Dimitri Tyomkin's queen and two pawns which went to 119 moves.