FM Steve Giddins reports from the Staunton Memorial tournament 2006

Yesterday, the tournament transferred from Simpsons to Wellington College, Berkshire, where it shares the venue with the NATO Chess Championships. The beautiful estate and grounds of the college provide another superb location for the event, although the players were a little surprised by one item in the information pack, given to everyone upon arrival. It transpires that the college is just a mile or two from Broadmoor secure mental hospital, which houses some of Britain’s most notorious killers, including Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper. In the event of any inmates escaping, the surrounding area is warned by the sounding of a WW2 air raid alarm, in which case players are advised to “stop the clocks and await further instructions”. Edward Winter may be able to contradict me on this, but I suspect that “Escaped mass murderer stops play” has never yet occurred in an international chess tournament!

Luckily, today’s acts of violence and outbreaks of madness were all confined to the chessboard. Ivan Sokolov finally slackened his murderous pace, drawing a quiet game against Timman. This allowed Werle and Adams to close the gap to half a point. The former did so by fending off Yge Visser’s highly interesting sacrifice of a whole rook. The original knight sacrifice was made with the intention of the follow-up 16...Rf4, although 16...Qe7, followed by h4-h3, is also interesting. In the game, Visser threw everything at the White King, but the key manoeuvre Ne2-g1 enabled the defences to hold. Ivan Sokolov suggested 21...Rxf4 as a possible improvement, although here too, White seems to have enough time for Ne2-g1.

Meanwhile, Adams was winning a deceptively easy game against Wells. The opening variation was very sharp, but in fact, Adams had played the first 21 moves of the game before, against Helgi Gretarsson in Reykjavik 2003. He naturally assumed that Wells was aware of this and had some improvement prepared, but as the latter used up more and more time, whilst following Gretarsson’s play, this seemed increasingly unlikely. It turned out after the game that Peter was unaware of the previous Adams encounter. He finally deviated from it with 22 c5 (Gretarsson played 22 e3, although he also lost), but Black has no problems and soon took the initiative. Peter’s resignation may look a little premature, but his position is very unpleasant after both 29 Ke1 b5 and 29 Kd3 Rc8, and he also had barely a minute left on his clock by this stage.

The game Day-Levitt saw last year’s tournament winner score his first victory this year. He departed from his customary French Defence, preferring the Sicilian, but allowed a line of the Grand Prix Attack which is generally regarded as rather difficult for Black. However, Day’s handling looks a little suspect (12 a4?! for example) and Levitt struck back with the well-timed pawn breaks 12...c4 and 13...e5. The queenless middlegame looked OK for White, but he was unable to find anything effective to do, and Black, with his two bishops, gradually assumed the initiative. He already had a large advantage when Day blundered material with 34 Bb6?, after which he lasted only a few moves longer.

In the day’s longest game, Jon Speelman suffered like an animal for almost the whole 7 hours, but eventually clung on for a draw. His insipid treatment of the Slav soon left him rather worse, and he was gradually outplayed to the point where he was lost. To the evident bewilderment of the watching Ivan Sokolov, L’Ami passed by 36...Rxf2, after which Speelman’s intended 37 Qd4 loses to 37...Qg3. However, the silicon dachshund prefers 37 Rd1, when after 37...Qg3 38 Rd8+ Kh7 39 Qxc5 Rxf3, White has the saving counterattack 40 Qf8. L’Ami instead reached a hugely favourable ending, but Speelman showed his tremendous understanding of this phase of the game and managed to salvage half a point. He thought he was probably lost until very near the end, but his opponent appeared to overlook the key idea 75 Kh4! after which the draw was secured. Just to add insult to injury, the game finished too late for the players to take dinner in the college dining room, and an exhausted Speelman was reduced to refuelling himself with a few packets of peanuts, in the bar. It’s a tough life being a professional chessplayer!