Scottish Chess Championships – Round 3

Me and my big mouth! In yesterday’s report I happened to mention that the top 23 boards had all been decisive (good!) with victory for the higher-rated player (bad!).  This must have upset the apple cart because the tournament really came alive today with a great many upsets, a great many near upsets and a great many games that were…errr…great.

The top board set the tone with the strong young Indian Grandmaster Magesh Panchanathan taking on the number one seed, Scottish Grandmaster Jonathan Rowson.  This was a truly spectacular game and is surely in the running for the £250 Lord Kirkwood Best Game Prize.  I delve into some of the beautiful variations here;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrIw65dHPmQ

Whatever you do, don’t miss this one!

Panchanathan’s countryman, GM S. Arun Prasad had a less successful day, losing to the much lower-rated player, FM Gudmundur Kjartansson.  This was no fortunate win based on a single mistake but was a very well played and controlled game by the Icelandic player.

The next shock came on board 7 where Scottish club player Martin Mitchell was giving away over 300 points to his illustrious GM opponent, John Shaw.  You wouldn’t imagine that the following position came from an exchange slav,

and things didn’t calm down much when Martin now unleashed 17. Nxd5!! – spectacular stuff that lead to a well deserved win over his grandmaster opponent.

Now that I look back at this picture it is easy to see that John was looking a bit sleepy before the start of the round.  GM Colin “If it’s free I’ll have it” McNab, however, stays awake using a complimentary coffee.

The final big upset of the day was the Scottish player Katie Martin (1906) taking apart our Uzbekistan visitor Ravshan Khamroev.  A game to give any centre-counter player nightmares as Black’s queen was hounded all over the board.  Just to leave you with some homework, here is the position with Katie to play, can you discover how she finished the game?