Chess: How does Black win?

LIKE a fine Cuban cigar, Vassily Ivanchuk just keeps rolling along at the annual Capablanca Memorial in Havana. The Ukrainian chess genius has established a tradition of dominating this, the strongest tournament in Latin America - but this year he didn't quite have it all his own way as in the past.

In 1962, on the twentieth anniversary of the death of Jose Raul Capablanca (1888-1942 - and world champion from 1921 to 1927), Cuba hosted its first memorial tournament in honour of its favourite chess son. And the founder and instigator of the tournament was no less a figure than the self-confessed chess addict and iconic revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, who was then the director of the National Bank and Minister of Industries.

Che's tradition of paying homage to Capa has continued over the years, and the 46th edition of the Capablanca Memorial saw multi-time winner Ivanchuk back yet again, this time joined in a double round all-play-all with emerging young talents such as Le Quang Liem (Vietnam), the current World Junior champion Dmitry Andreikin (Russia) and David Navarra (Czech Republic), not to mention the two leading Cuban stars of today, Leinier Dominguez and Lazaro Bruzon.

Despite a bad first half to the tournament, Ivanchuk came storming back in the second half with three successive wins in the final three rounds to notch-up a record-breaking fifth victory in his five appearances there. In the final round, he beat the leader, Le Quang Liem, to join him on 6.5/10 - but the Ukrainian ace took the title by virtue of better tiebreak scores of the two.

L Bruzon - V Ivanchuk

46th Capablanca Memorial, (9)

Caro-Kann Defence

1 e4 c6 2 d4 d5 3 Nc3 dxe4 4 Nxe4 Bf5 5 Ng3 Bg6 6 h4 h6 7 Nf3 e6 8 h5 Bh7 9 Bd3 Bxd3 10 Qxd3 Nf6 11 Ne4 Nbd7 12 Bd2 a5 13 0–0–0 Bb4 14 Bxb4 axb4 15 Nd6+ Ke7 16 Ne5 Rf8 17 Nec4 Qc7 18 Rhe1 b5 19 Ne3 Rxa2! 20 Qb3 Ra4 21 Re2 Qa7 22 Nef5+ Kd8 23 Nxf7+ Rxf7 24 Qxe6 Nb6 25 b3 0–1