A blunderful day at Simpsons

Steve Giddins reports on round 8 of the 2007 Staunton Memorial

It was not so many years ago that one could routinely see people walking the streets of Britain, wearing T-shirts carrying the slogan "Be alert - Britain needs lerts!". Simpson's-in-the-Strand isn't really the sort of place where one wears a T-shirt (indeed, it was not so long ago that gentlemen were refused entry unless wearing a tie), but the eighth round of this year's Staunton Memorial certainly bore out the value of the slogan in a chess context. To put it another way, "Chess is 99% tactics", as the early 20th century master Richard Teichmann is reputed to have said, and few could argue with that. The best-laid strategic plans of mice, men and GMs tend to go horribly astray when tactical oversights intervene.

The first to learn this painful lesson yesterday was Erwin L'Ami, whose solid play thus far in the tournament had seen him move to plus-one, unbeaten. His early c5-advance against Ivan Sokolov's 4...a6 Slav led to the following heavyweight position:

Positional manoeuvering is clearly the order of the day, and Erwin duly continued in such vein with 16.Ng1??, planning to bring the knight to f3 and, thence, e5. However, to his horror, the ever-alert Sokolov replied 16...Bxc5! and the bishop cannot be taken: 17 dxc5 Qf6 18 Rb1 Qc3+ 19 Ke2 Nxc5 and the bishop on d3 drops off. A visibly disgusted Erwin stared at the position for about 15 minutes, before acquiescing in the loss of a vital pawn by 17.Nf3 His sufferings thereafter were not unduly prolonged, and after the further moves 17...Bb4+ 18.Ke2 Bc3 19.Rb1 Nf5 20.Bxf5 exf5 21.Bd2 Bxd2 22.Nxd2 c5 23.Nf3 Rc8 24.Rhd1 c4 25.Ne5 Nf6, he decided that he had been looking at this mess for quite long enough, and resigned. 0–1

Erwin L'Ami - just one of those days!

Shocking though this blunder was, it paled almost into insignificance alongside what Jan Smeets did a few minutes later against Werle:

A very sharp line of the Vienna QGD had led to the highly unbalanced position in the diagram. Werle (White) had just played 17.Nc3-e4. Now he was anticipating a line such as 17...Qc7 18.Ne5 0-0-0 19.Nxd7 Qxd7 20.Rxf8 Rxf8 21.Nc5, with interesting compensation. Instead, he could scarcely believe his eyes when Smeets, after thinking for a good ten minutes, produced the move 17...f5??, totally overlooking the elementary threat contained in White's last move. Werle duly played 18.Nd6+ Ke7 19.Nxb7, netting a whole piece, and Smeets resigned after playing a few more moves out of inertia and shock.

Jan Smeets: "What the hell happened to me?"

While these shocks were going on, Adams was drawing a short and quiet game as Black against Speelman, thereby allowing Loek van Wely to forge into the outright lead in the tournament by beating Jovanka Houska. Once again, Jovanka put up stout resistance against her formidable opponent, and was the last game to finish, but the damage was done at a relatively early stage:

Both sides had consumed a fair bit of time over the last few moves. Jovanka now continued 22.c3?! (Fritz 10's preference is 22.Ng5 g6 23.Be5, with unclear play) Qxb2 23.Rfb1?? Played immediately, but it is perhaps a little naive to think that a player of van Wely's strength could have fallen into a 2-move deep queen trap. Of course, he had not, and instead had foreseen the retort 23...Qxg2+! 24.Kxg2 Nxf4+ 25.Kf3 Nxd3, regaining the queen. White is now able to win the exchange, by means of the tactical trick 26.Nf6+!, but after 26...Kh8 27.Nxe8 cxd4, Black has too many pawns. In fact, Jovanka now proceeded to put up strenuous resistance, and came quite close to holding the ending, but van Wely eventually found a way to coordinate his pieces and win.

Loek van Wely - now leading outright

Gawain Jones scored his second win, by dint of some excellent opening preparation. His game with Colin McNab opened as follows:

1.e4 g6 2.d4 Bg7 3.Nc3 d6 4.f4 Nf6 5.Nf3 0–0 6.Be3 b6 7.Qd2 Bb7 8.e5 Ng4 9.0–0–0 c5 10.dxc5 Qc8 11.cxd6 exd6

Thus far, the players are following the game Chandler-McNab, Gibraltar 2004, which continued 12 Nb5, and was eventually drawn. Gawain instead played the prepared novelty 12.Bg1 and after 12...dxe5 13.h3 Nf6 14.fxe5 Ne4 15.Nxe4 Bxe4 16.Bd3 was simply a good pawn up. Colin resisted hard in the ending, but Gawain's technique was more than up to the task. It is back to the drawing board for McNab's Pirc Defence.

The remaining decisive game of the day saw Peter Wells face Jan Timman. Peter had lost his previous two, Jan his previous three, so someone's bad run had to end. The game started in original fashion with the moves 1.Nf3 d5 2.c4 d4 3.b4 f6 4.e3 e5 5.c5 d3, although a search of your database will confirm that it not so original as it looks, and has been played many times before. Peter soon built up a menacing position, and Black looked to be in serious trouble:

After the game, Timman admitted that Black's position would have been very difficult after 21.Rg4. Already in severe time-trouble, Wells instead played 21.h5 g5 22.Bf6 h6, when things are less clear. With his flag rising, Wells' position fell apart rapidly. 23.Bh3 Bg7 24.Bxg7 Rxg7 25.Qc3 Kf8 26.Nb2 26.Qf6+ is not as strong as it looks, after 26...Kg8 27 Qxh6 Qd4! 26...Ng8 27.Bf1 Rd7 28.e5 Rd4 29.Re4 Rbxb4 30.e6 Qd5 31.Rxd4 Rxd4 Here, White lost on time, but his position has already gone. 0–1

So, with three rounds to go, van Wely leads by half a point from Adams, with Ivan Sokolov a further half-point behind. The Dutch now lead the team competition by a massive 9 points.