Chess - The Scotsman 28/03/2012

Published on 28/03/2012 00:00

Wednesday’s puzzle...

THE concept of Daylight Saving Time has been fraught with controversy ever since chess aficionado Benjamin Franklin conceived the idea in 1784 while serving as a minister to France. Its official implementation came with the introduction of British Summer Time in 1916 as a means to conserve resources during the First World War.

Even today, regions and countries routinely change their approaches to Daylight Saving Time – but if the latest incident at the European Individual Championship in Plovdiv, Bulgaria is anything to go by, the republic of Georgia claims never to have heard of such a concept, as six of their players failed to appear on time for their games on Sunday, and were forfeited.

The organisers left several prominent reminders for all players about Sunday’s early start, but the Georgians claimed that, as a country, they were not aware of changing the clocks. The team considered lodging an appeal, but they were warned it would be instantly turned down.

With a perfect start of four wins, England’s Gawain Jones stormed into the clear lead after round 4; but after two successive draws, he’s now in a ten-way tie on 5/6 going into the event’s first and only rest day on Monday. In tiebreak order, the leaders are Arkadij Naiditsch, Laurent Fressinet, Yuriy Kuzubov, Jones, Ernesto Inarkiev, Denis Khismatullin, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Maxim Matlakov, Anton Korobov and Sergei Azarov. Top seed Fabiano Caruana and seven other 2700s are among a chasing pack of 24 players, half a point back with 4.5/6.

A Naiditsch - I Sokolov

European Individual Ch., (6)

Ruy Lopez

1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bb5 a6 4 Ba4 Nf6 5 0–0 Be7 6 d3 d6 7 c4 0–0 8 h3 Be6 9 Nc3 Nd7 10 Be3 f5 11 exf5 Bxf5 12 d4 Bf6 13 d5 Na5 14 Nd2 Bd3 15 Qg4 Nb6 16 Bxb6 cxb6 17 Rfd1 Kh8 18 Nde4 Bxe4 19 Qxe4 g6 20 Bc2 Bg7 21 Bd3 Rf4 22 Qe2 Rd4 23 Ne4 b5 24 cxb5 Qb6 25 Rab1 axb5 26 Ng5 Rxd5 27 Bxg6! Rxd1+ 28 Rxd1 hxg6 29 Rxd6 Qc7 30 Rxg6 Ra6 31 Rxa6 bxa6 32 Qh5+ Kg8 33 Qh7+ Kf8 1–0