shown to me by a friend. Tonight, it's time for another excerpt and story, this time from the final round.
With a +2 score, I expected to be paired up, and I wasn't disappointed. My last round opponent was Mongolian GM Dashzeveg Sharavdorj, but despite his title and his possession of the white pieces, I was both calm and ready. His rating wasn't so terrifying, and I was in decent form and reasonably prepared for the opening.
Sure enough, things went well. Sharavdorj never had more than a small edge throughout the game, though once or twice I had some anxious moments before finding the best move. Let's start with this position:
White has just played 26.Qe2-b5, eying my a4- and b7-pawns, and also threatening to threaten my e-pawn as well. The most obvious rejoinder is 26...Bxh3, but White is under no obligation to take the bishop. After 27.Bxb7 White re-establishes material equality while threatening to take on e5 and a4, so it looks as if White's up a pawn for nothing. At least that was my thought during the game, but the oracle informs me that Black can continue patiently: 27...h5 28.Qxe5 (28.Qxa4 Bg4 is fine: Black either achieves a drawn opposite-colored bishop ending or, on a knight move, plays either ...Bc5 or ...Qb6) Bg4! 29.Qxf6+ Kxf6 30.Nd2 Bc5 31.Bc6 Bd4 32.Bxa4 Bxb2 33.Nc4 Bc1 followed by ...Be2 and ...Bxc4, with a drawn opposite-colored bishop ending.
Unfortunately, White can play better, and I saw this, too. After 26...Bxh3, White plays 27.Qxb7, threatening 28.Nxe5. I can withdraw my bishop and overprotect f7 with 27...Be6, but after 28.Bxe6 Qxe6 29.Qb5 White wins a pawn, and this time it looks more meaningful than in the 27.Bxb7 variation.
So am I in a bit of trouble here? Not at all! Your faithful blogger played
26...Qf4! This nifty move has several virtues. First, by leaving the bishop on c8, there's no Qxb7 to worry about just yet. Second, there are perpetual, or rather, near-perpetual possibilities involving Qc1-f4. (It's not yet perpet, because White can play Kh2, Kh1, and Ng1.) Third, 27.Qxa4 can be met by 27...Qc1+ and 28...Qxb2. And fourth, the ...Bxh3 idea is more serious now, on account of the follow-ups ...Qg4 and ...Bxg2 Kxg2 Qg4+.
27.Qc4 (27.Bxb7 Bxb7 28.Qxb7 Qc1+ 29.Kh2 Qf4+ 30.Kh1 Qc1+ and now White should accept the perpetual, because 31.Ng1?! Qb1! leaves White scrambling. [The immediate 31...Bc5 isn't as strong, on account of the annoying 31.Qc7.] Black's queen eyes e4 and b2, and ...Bc5 is in the offing.)
27...Bxh3 28.Qc3!
A very nice move by Sharavdorj, and now I was a bit concerned. He's threatening Nxe5, with evil intent on the long diagonal. He's also threatening to take the bishop, and he has neutralized both my ...Bxg2 and ...Qg4 ideas. The first fails, of course, because the Nf3 is protected, and the second loses as well: 28...Qg4 29.Qxe5+ Kg8 30.Qh2! and my poor bishop is trapped. Black has only one decent move, but fortunately it's good enough:
28...Be6. Let's fast forward through the next few moves:
29.Bxe6 fxe6 30.Qc7+ Kf6 31.Qc8 Kf7 32.Qxb7+ Be7 33.Qc6 g5! 34.Qc3 Bf6 35.Nd2 h5 36.Nc4 Kg6 (So that after 37.g3 I can play 37...Qxe4.)
Now White's best move is probably 37.Qe1, with a slight advantage, but Sharavdorj's move demanded an accurate reply as well.
37.Qe3
Now White wants to play Nb6 and Nxa4, so Black's best move is
37...Bd8.
Now White's knight has nothing to do and the queen trade is peachy for Black. If White does nothing, then I'll keep advancing my kingside pawns. So White doesn't have too many options, but he can keep trying. Sharavdorj continued
38.Qc5, and since I had already decided many moves ago that I wanted to maintain both e-pawns as a shield for my king, I returned the bishop to f6:
38...Bf6. (Note that there's no perpetual, because White's queen covers f2 after 38...Qc1+ 39.Kh2 Qf4+ 40.g3.) Now I'm threatening to take on e4, and moves like 39.Qc6 or 39.Qc8 allow an immediate perpetual. Sharavdorj therefore retreated with
39.Qe3, and I followed suit with
39...Bd8.
It's time for White to try something else if he hopes to win, and so he played
40.Qe1. His idea is to play g3 and then swing the queen to c3 or b4, so I prepared for this by overprotecting my e-pawn:
40...Bc7. Now my bishop is ideally placed for defense, and I'm ready to push the kingside pawns, achieving either an easy perpetual or, if White goes crazy, some winning chances.
How is White to avoid this? Frankly, the position is completely equal, but he's the higher-rated player, needing to win to make any sort of decent money. That gives him motivation, and having just made the time control, he has the means to work out something serious. He burned a fair amount of time here - 11 minutes - and indeed, both of us had used a decent amount of time over the last few moves. Here's a summary:
37. Qe3 (3 minutes) Bd8 (4 minutes)
38. Qc5 (10 minutes) Bf6 (5 minutes)
39. Qe3 (6 minutes) Bd8 (instantly)
40. Qe1 (8 minutes) Bc7 (3 minutes)
And now:
41. Qe3 (11 minutes)
Given that almost 3/4 of an hour had passed since I made my 37th move, and that we had crossed the psychologically significant threshold of the time control, it's understandable that Sharavdorj had forgotten about the game's continuity with the previous few moves. But have a look at those moves, especially numbers 37, 39, and now 41. See a pattern? If not, look at the last two diagrams.
If you notice a three-time repetition available for the taking if I play
41...Bd8, you're right. It's up to me whether to take it, and maybe I should have played 41...h4 or taken on e3. It's dead equal in any case, but as my higher-rated opponent was under more pressure to make something happen, the psychologically astute decision may have been to offer him a little rope, just in case he'd rather hang himself than accede to the draw.
Having been on the defensive side for quite a while, however, and with hopes of a decent payday even with the draw, I claimed a draw by repetition with the move 41...Bd8. And here something amazing happened: my opponent disputed the claim. For the reasons given earlier, it was entirely understandable that he had overlooked the repetition. But once the claim is made, it's as obvious as can be, by perusing the scoresheet, that the exact same position will occur three times when I retreat the bishop to d8.
Much to my surprise, Sharavdorj rebutted my claim based on my having played 36...Kg6 before the repetition. The relevance of this was lost on me, but rather than argue this with people around us trying to play, I went for a TD, Carol Jarecki. She had no trouble ascertaining the correctness of my claim in just a few seconds, but Sharavdorj still didn't believe or accept it. After that we spoke with another director, Chris Bird, and he too more or less instantly approved it. I think by this point Sharavdorj finally accepted it, but I'm not sure he understood why it was a draw. My impression is that he believed that the whole move sequence needed to be repeated three times, but that's not the rule. What needs to be repeated is the
position, not any particular sequence of moves. As long as the position occurs three times, with the same player to move each time, the claim can be made. (More accurately, the player declares his or her intention to repeat the position the third time. You must
not execute the board, as once it's the opponent's turn it's too late - he or she can vary.)
So the game was drawn, and I had the incredible experience of seeing a grandmaster unfamiliar with a basic rule of the game, one that works the same way in FIDE competitions as well as in the USCF. Yet it turned out that he wasn't the only player in the tournament unfamiliar with some of the rules of the game!
About a year and a half or so ago, I was talking with Tim McGrew on the ICC, and he mentioned to his dismay that the USCF had just disallowed the practice of letting players write their moves before playing them. He disliked it because his students couldn't use that technique as an aid against blundering; my view was that the rule change was a good one for precisely that reason. The point of recording the moves isn't to take notes or to provide any sort of help, but to have a record of the game for posterity and to settle disputes (about time controls, three-time repetitions, etc.).
Fast forward to round 1. My opponent wrote a move down before playing it, and I "informed" him that it was illegal. He apologized and refrained from the practice, and the game continued normally. Later, in round 4, it happened again, but this time when I admonished my opponent, he rejected my claim! So, off to the TD, who told me that...my opponent was right. Apparently the USCF had (mostly) rescinded the rule (except in cases of "excessive" crossing-out of moves, however that's supposed to be quantified), so this time it was my turn to contritely apologize (and I did). So twice in the tournament I failed to know fairly basic rules, and twice my opponents failed in that respect as well.
Sheesh.
