Friday 1 October 2010

2010 Olympiad - Day 9

With the FIDE elections over, it was back to the chess. PNG had another narrow loss, this time losing to Sierra Leone. We lost 2.5-1.5, leaving us planted firmly at the bottom of the table. Of course if you look at game points rather than match points we are actually ahead of a number of teams, but of course this isn't how the Olympiad is scored these days.
This time the hero was Helmut Marko, who is now the teams best scorer with 3.5/9. Joselito Marcos and Rupert Jones both lost, while I scrapped a draw in a game where it looked like I couldn't lose until I made a bad positional choice. I then had to grovel for quite a while until my opponent gave me a chance to reach a
drawn K+P ending, which I took.
The diagrammed position was reached after all 4 rooks had been exchanged down the f file. It is now drawn but I decided to take the shortest path to that goal.

53. ... Qd4+ 54.Ke2 Qxd3+ 55.Kxd3 Kf6 56.Ke2 Ke6 57.Kf2 Kf6 58.Ke2 Ke6 59.Ke3 Ke5 60.Kd3 Kf6 61.Ke2 Ke6 ½-½

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

After ..Qd4+, Qxd4 cxd4 doesn't white win the endgame? The white king picks up the pawn on d4 when the black king arrives on e5 due to zugzwang. Just something I'm suggesting just having seen it on the screen. Pete

Anonymous said...

whoops - no white does lose that - disregard... its white who ends up in zug.

Anonymous said...

Actually it would still be drawn if both sides avoid attacking the opponent's pawn (first): 55.Ke2 Kf6 56.Kd2! Ke6! 57. Ke2! Kf6! and so on.