Van Wely closes on the lead

Round 8 of the 2008 Staunton Memorial saw only one decisive game, as Van Wely defeated Bob Wade, to close to within half a point of tournament leader, Mickey Adams. Wade selected a solid QGD as Black, and although White obtained some pressure, Bob defended excellently and looked to have good chances to hold the half point. Keene's suggestion of 39...d4+ may have been one improvement, and even as late as four moves before the end, 47..Ke6 may still give Black chances of continuing to resist.

The game Smeets-Timman was the longest of the tournament so far, extending to a mammoth 134 moves. After a tough middlegame, Timman won the exchange shortly before the first time control, but White had substantial counterplay against the black king, and it does not look as though Timman ever missed a real winning chance. One obvious try was 40...Nxe6 41.Rxe6 Rd2, but White has a perpetual after 42.Re8+ Kf7 43.Re1 Rxc5 44.Ng6. Timman later overplayed his hand with 44...f5, and Smeets was winning comfortably around move 50. However, he was extremely short of time, and Timman engineered a miracle save, sacrificing a rook for the White passed pawn and eliminiating the last white pawn, to reach the notorious ending of R+N v R. This is a theoretical draw, but grandmasters have been known to lose it in practical play. Kasparov once beat Judit Polgar in the ending, whilst the most recent such case saw the strong American GM, Onischuk lose the position against Lenier Dominguez at the recent Biel tournament, but Timman showed his class by defending the ending perfectly.

Short played an excellent middlegame against Sokolov, manoeuvering subtly to exploit the dark square weaknesses in White's position. When the position opened up around move 27, Black's position certainly looked very promising:

Here, the obvious move is 27...Nd4, but after an exchange sacrifice on d4, White could never lose. Short instead tried 27... Ng5 28.Rxd6 Nxe4 29.Bxe4 Rxe4 30.Qd3?! cxb4 31.axb4. The exposed position of White's king looks serious, but Black too has his back rank problems, and nothing clear is apparent. Short went into the rook ending with 31...Qxc4 32.Qxc4+ Rxc4, but after 33.Rd8 Kf8 34.R1d7 Rxd8 35.Rxd8+ Ke7 36.Rg8 Kf7 37.Rb8! he could not prevent Sokolov eliminating the queenside pawns, after which the 3v2 ending was a dead draw.

Wells-Adams was a highly complicated draw.

In the diagram, Adams initiated very obscure complications with 7...d5, after which play continued in spectacular fashion with  8.dxe5 dxe4 9.Qxd8 Rxd8 10.exf6 exf3 11.fxg7 Ne5 12.Bf4 Ng6 13.Bh6 Rd5 14.Re1 Bh3!? 15.Nd2!? As far as I can see, the balance was never seriously disturbed, but this is definitely one game where the players are the best source of information as to what was really going on!

Speelman agreed a draw in a position where he looked to stand clearly better, with Black's king stuck in the centre and a weakness on d5. Things were actually less clear than that, and White also had some mobilisation problems, but it was still something of a surprise that Speelman should offer the draw when he did. Finally, Werle and L'Ami played a very complicated game, which was agreed drawn at move 20; but it was all theory, as both players of course knew.

So, after 8 rounds, the leading scores are Adams 5.5, and Van Wely 5, with Timman, Short, Smeets and Speelman all on 4.

Finally, I must add a correction to my comments on the game L'Ami-Sokolov from round 5. Optically defeated by the time-troubled handwriting on both players' scoresheets, I committed the calumny of accusing the players of missing a simple win with 34.Rd8+. In actual fact, as both have since confirmed, Sokolov did play 33...Qa5, not 33...Qc5, so the mate was never possible. My apologies to both players, and my thanks to Erwin for helping me reconstruct the correct and complete score, which is now on the tournament website.