Two Excerpts from the European Rapid Championship
Tuesday, December 21, 2010 at 9:50PM The European Rapid Championship took place in Warsaw this past weekend, and with tons of strong players there were many fine games and exciting moments. Not all the games were so impressive, however - witness this:
Tomasz Markowski (2625) - Radoslaw Wojtaszek (2726) (Round 8):
1.Nf3 d5 2.c4 c6 3.d4 Nf6 4.Qb3 dxc4 5.Qxc4 Bg4 6.Nc3 Nbd7 7.e4 Bxf3 8.gxf3 e5 9.Be3 Bd6 10.0-0-0
This line has fared pretty well for White, but Black's position is certainly playable.
10...exd4
This has only been played once before, by Boris Gelfand against Ruslan Ponomariov in the finals of the 2009 World Cup. Ponomariov recaptured with the bishop and eventually won a hard battle (though he lost the war, as Gelfand eventually won the match and the tournament), but Black was not in trouble at this point.
11.Qxd4
And now Wojtaszek, all 2726 rating points' worth of him, played 11...Qc7?? and resigned after 12.Qxd6. There's hope for us all...or is it that we're all hopeless, at least sometimes?
Here's another one:
(Position after 23...Bg7-h6 in Alexander Moiseenko (2670) - Artur Jussupow (2589), round 13)
White sees the threat of 24...Be3, evaluates it as no big deal, and plays 24.Rxc7. Or rather, 24.Rxc7?? White is only half right: ...Be3 isn't a big deal right now or immediately after a rook trade, but it is in fact a VERY big deal! It just needs a little setting up, that's all:
24...Qxf2+!!
Oops. White resigned after 25.Rxf2 Rb1+, because after 26.Rf1 Be3+ - now! - drives the king into the corner and forces mate in two more moves.
Reader Comments (4)
I love these kinds of posts, because even I can understand them :)
Wow, you've got to feel just a bit sorry for Wojtaszek- in these days of instant internet communication there's no hiding place for horrors like Qc7?? It seems top chessplayers have no need of Mr Assange, their darkest & most embarrassing moments are all out in the open!
Sometimes I almost feel worried for the game- imagine if, say, a long & hard fought world championship match were decided on an incident like this. Wouldn't it make us all look a bit silly to our non-chessplaying bretheren?
No, because our nonplaying Chess bretheren wouldn't understand enough to know how embarrassing it supposed to be. Still every top player has made a similar guffaw at some point.
Well, when Kramnik blundered against Fritz Junior (I think?), it hit pretty mainstream media. That and toiletgate. I think most people who are only casually familiar with the rules of chess understand that walking into a mate in 1 is not expert-level behavior.