NH Tournament, Round 2
The "old" guys had White today, but they were even less successful than the kids were yesterday! Four games were drawn, though White had an edge in a couple of games and a won position in van Wely-Nakamura. Ultimately, though, the only winner was David Howell, with Black, against a very slow moving Ljubomir Ljubojevic. The Rising Stars "team"* thus leads by one, with all the youngsters on 50% except for Nakamura, who is on +1 despite his somewhat shaky play thus far.
The tournament website is here, the games - with my notes - are here.
* I put "team" in scare quotes because it's in each team member's interest for his teammates to fail dismally: the top scorer on the Rising Stars team (at least if he finishes with a plus score) wins an automatic spot to the Amber rapid & blindfold tournament in early 2011.
Reader Comments (2)
On van Wely-Nakamura:
- As far as I remember from watching live, both players were in "mild" time trouble after move 30, something like one minute left per move. Maybe this wasn't enough for van Wely to find, calculate and double-check your line on move 36 - or it was too tempting to win another pawn (but making the win much more complicated).
- I am not that sure about your line on move 45: 45.h3 Ra5: 46.Rh7 Ra1+ 47. Kh2 f4! 48.Rh5:+ Kf6 and e.g. 49.h4 Ra2. Can white push his h-pawn without losing it, or else avoid simplifying into the (often) theoretically drawn ending with rook and bishop pawn? If there's a win for white, the lines might be as long as your later ones with 48.Kf2.
- With 48.Kh2, it looks like van Wely missed that 51.Kh4:?? runs into 51.-Rh6 mate. At that stage, could he still have returned to the plan of moving the king to the queenside (starting with 51.Kh2)?
Thomas,
The win is very easy. After 48.Rxh5+ Kf6, White plays 49.Rh8. Now Black has huge problems. There are two major threats: 50.Rg8, cutting off the king, and 50.Rf8+, which forces the king to e5 (...Kg5 h4+ and Rxf4). In either case, the h-pawn starts to roll. 50.Rg8 is the bigger of the two threats, and after a prophylactic move like 49...Kg7 White wins almost trivially with 50.Rh4 Ra4 51.Rg4+ and now we have two cases.
If 51...Kh6 it's very easy: 52.h4 Rb4 53.Kh3 Ra4 54.g3: the end.
51...Kf6 is more resilient, but still hopeless. 52.h4 Kf5 and now while 53.g3 leads to a winning version of the r + f & h pawns vs. rook ending, there's no need for that. 53.Kh3 with the idea of 54.Rg5+ and 55.Kg4 is simple enough for humans. Black's only prophylactic defense to this is 53...Ra2, but now among the many wins the simplest and perhaps most thematic is 54.Rg8! followed by Rf8+ if Black keeps the rook on the second rank, or by 55.Rg5+ and 56.Kg4 if the rook goes somewhere else.
There are no long lines to calculate in such endings; it's enough to find a good idea or two. (Which isn't necessarily easy at the end of a long game, of course.)