English Chess Forum

Live games from the World Universities' Chess Championship will be broadcast online from Zurich.

Assuming they're not using some dodgy pairing system, Peter Poobalasingam will find his way onto board 12 against IM Davit Benidze from Georgia (2508). The time control is 90 mins + 30 secs per move, and starts at 2pm CET. I assume that's 1pm BST.

The link is here: http://www.wucc2010.ch/joomla/index.php ... &Itemid=19

OK, I didn't realise that the list of entries wasn't a complete list of entries. So the manual parings I had calculated are wrong!

However, the following games involving English players are on the live boards:
8) Vasily Papin (RUS, 2521) v Peter Poobalasingam (ENG, 2332)
w5) Andjelija Stojanovic (SRB, 2337) v Sarah Hegarty (ENG, 2084)

Peter drew and Sarah lost. They were both under pressure for a long time, but Peter hung on very gamely.

Note that on board 13, an IM didn't resign KNB v K, and his 2292-rated opponent ran out of moves to win it!

Alex Holowczak wrote:Note that on board 13, an IM didn't resign KNB v K, and his 2292-rated opponent ran out of moves to win it!

Even worse, the 2292 player had no real need to go into that ending. At move 70 say, leave the pawn on b3 blockaded by the Bishop on b2 and get the white king in range of the black king . Maybe try to make Ng6 work to queen the h pawn. Perhaps he'd played too many games without an increment - when you would want your opponent's last pawn off the board to avoid potential time loss.

Roger de Coverly wrote:

Alex Holowczak wrote:Note that on board 13, an IM didn't resign KNB v K, and his 2292-rated opponent ran out of moves to win it!

Even worse, the 2292 player had no real need to go into that ending. At move 70 say, leave the pawn on b3 blockaded by the Bishop on b2 and get the white king in range of the black king . Maybe try to make Ng6 work to queen the h pawn. Perhaps he'd played too many games without an increment - when you would want your opponent's last pawn off the board to avoid potential time loss.

Yes, I noticed this too. My plan would have been to get my K to c1, play Bg7(+), and then get my King on b2 to block everything over there. There was no rush to play h7, and he could have played my idea quite quickly with no real danger, so it would have gained maybe a minute or so on the clock.

Of course, this is what happens if you don't have adjournments. The endgame becomes a total lottery!

I would have played h7. It doesn't seem at all clear to me that White can avoid the ending, and really, why should he need to?

More interesting is Wang Hao failing to defend R+B vs R (albeit made harder by the presence of an extra pawn for the defender thereby presumably neutering the "second rank defence") against Shirov.

Richard Bates wrote:I would have played h7. It doesn't seem at all clear to me that White can avoid the ending, and really, why should he need to?

Yes, but presumably you know KNB v K. Surely when he played h7 he did so knowing he could do KNB v K reliably...

Also, with incremental time controls, he could have faffed around for a bit first, gained more time on the clock, and then made sure he knew how to do it inside the fifty moves! Although, 50 moves would add another 50 minutes to the duration of the game. You'd have thought a 2300-standard player could do KNB v K given that long to do it...

Feel sorry for him though, because he could have won against IM playing for his country in the WUCC... Must be a bit sad about it.

Richard Bates wrote:I would have played h7. It doesn't seem at all clear to me that White can avoid the ending, and really, why should he need to?

More interesting is Wang Hao failing to defend R+B vs R (albeit made harder by the presence of an extra pawn for the defender thereby presumably neutering the "second rank defence") against Shirov.

Apparently Wang Hao stated that he wanted to get the ending over with quickly because he had a headache! See ChessVibes for the players' post-game comments.

Alex Holowczak wrote:

Richard Bates wrote:I would have played h7. It doesn't seem at all clear to me that White can avoid the ending, and really, why should he need to?

Yes, but presumably you know KNB v K. Surely when he played h7 he did so knowing he could do KNB v K reliably...

Also, with incremental time controls, he could have faffed around for a bit first, gained more time on the clock, and then made sure he knew how to do it inside the fifty moves! Although, 50 moves would add another 50 minutes to the duration of the game. You'd have thought a 2300-standard player could do KNB v K given that long to do it...

Feel sorry for him though, because he could have won against IM playing for his country in the WUCC... Must be a bit sad about it.

I think it's pretty clear he did know how to do it in principle, he just got confused around move 97/98.

It's also worth mentioning that Vedantha Kumar drew with black against an FM rated 2414, 431 points higher than his own rating. His reward is white against a 2460 tomorrow

Tomorrow, the following will be on the Live Boards (assuming there's the same coverage as today)
15) Peter Poobalasingam (ENG, 2332) v Malkhaz Sulashvili (GEO, 2500)

Poobalasingam won this morning to move to 1.5/2; a good start towards an IM-norm! He'll be on the live boards again in round 3 later on. Some very good results so far!

More live games for English players in round 3 this afternoon:
11) Anuar Ismagambetov (KAZ, 2492) v Peter Poobalasingam (ENG, 2332)
w7) Batkhuyag Munguntuul (MNG, 2412) v Sarah Hegarty (ENG, 2084)

Sarahs opponent has allowed her equality and shes rated 2450... would be great result with Black.

I never use rybka so no doubt some tw*t will say im wrong and cite it as bible.

But Kf2 b5 a3 , sarah is = there.