Scottish Chess Championships – Round 2

Scottish Chess Championships 2009 – Round 2

Top class chess these days requires serious preparation and any competitive advantage is pounced upon.  Here English GM Mark Hebden prepares for his second round game with a copy of Rampant Chess, a Rampant Chess mug and a Rampant Chess T-sh...hey, wait a minute, that’s not a Rampant  Chess t-shirt.

Needless to say, his unfortunate opponent couldn’t last long against such mighty merchandise.

A popular rule change implemented in some international events is the so called ‘Sofia rules’ where players are prohibited from offering draws before the first time control.  Scotland being a more laid back place we are not enforcing such rules this year but, instead, are awarding the ‘chicken’ prizes to anyone who dares to agree a short draw.

We’ve only ordered two of them so let’s hope we get a lot of fighting chess.  One of the masters of fighting and entertaining chess is Scottish grandmaster Paul Motwani who pulled off another spectacular win today against the experienced Jonathan Grant.  Jonathan is well known for his excellent opening preparation and rarely do we see him in trouble like this.  I’ve annotated this game with an audio file (yep, I’ve finally joined the 20th century…or is it 21st?) which you can access here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muVXyehmhpg

Elsewhere around the top boards, results were also following grading order.  In fact the top 23 boards were all decisive in the higher rated player’s favour – how am I supposed to make a story out of that?

A very interesting little position arose in Jonathan Rowson’s game on board 1 (Rowson,-Thomson).  Our top seed has been pressing for a while in this endgame when this position was reached with White to play.

How is White to proceed? If he plays 46. Nxa3 then after 46…Kd7 Black is threatening to capture on b4 and 47. Nc2 runs into 47…Rc7.  Alternatively, 46. Rxa3 allows Black lots of activity with 46…Rc7 again.  Jonathan finds a brilliant solution:

46. Nxa3 Kd7 47. Ra5!! Which is worth another diagram surely,

the clever point being that Bxb4 can be answered by Rxb5.  Yep, they don’t give out those grandmaster titles for nothing my friend.