Guildford are perennial winners in Britain’s national league, the 4NCL. Organised and partly bankrolled by their shrewd manager, Roger Emerson, the Surrey team have won 81 matches and drawn two over eight unbeaten years.
Until this week, Guildford had never entered the annual European Club Cup, which has been dominated by teams from the former USSR. The situation changed when the pandemic switched the Eurocup online, where 91 competing teams and numerous high-class squads made for the event’s strongest ever entry, and a surprise winner on Wednesday.
Guildford’s grandmaster quintet, led by the UK’s No 1, Michael Adams, were effectively England under a different name, plus a Bulgarian reserve. Seeded fourth, they finished seventh in the final (+3=2-4) as nine tough games wore them down. Guildford had nobody aged under 30. Their individual scores were Adams 10/18, David Howell (unbeaten in the final and with a win over Russia’s Vladislav Artemiev) 13.5/19, Luke McShane 11.5/18, Gawain Jones 12/18, Ivan Cheparinov 14/19. Jones won silver on board four and Howell bronze on board two.
The winners were a surprise, Baden-Baden, the German champions, sponsored by Grenke Bank and led by France’s top pair, were favourites to win the whole event but finished last of six in their semi-final. Grenke also backed the little-known Deizisau-Stuttgart team, which edged ahead in the final two rounds and took the trophy.
Deizisau’s winning total was 14/18 match points, but they would only have been third if board points had decided. All their nine matches finished 2.5-1.5, 2-2 or 1.5-2.5, while two of their six players had serious minus scores. They were saved by the rising star of German chess Vincent Keymer, 16, who impressed with 5.5/7. and by Georg Meier (5/6), who also played on the winning Grenke team in last month’s World Corporate Championship.
Andrey Esipenko, 19, who beat the world champion, Magnus Carlsen, at Tata Wijk in January, shone again in the Eurocup with an unbeaten 15.5/20, probably the best individual score of the event. Esipenko and Keymer both won individual gold medals, for boards four and five respectively.
Esipenko’s most brilliant game was his rook and knight sacrifice en route to a 21-move mating attack against France’s No 2. After Black missed a chance to stay level by 14...Nf6, it was like watching the legendary Mikhail Tal reincarnated.
There was a strange finish to the game Jones v Krishnan Sasikiran, one of three Indians in the Czech team Novy Bor. White (Sasikiran) Kf3, Bc8. Black (Jones) Kg1, Bc7, Ps f4, h4. The position is of course dead drawn with bishops of opposite colours and neither black pawn able to advance. Jones had offered a draw three moves earlier, but his opponent failed to notice. At the captains’ meeting before the start, with a time control of 15 minutes per player per game plus a five seconds per move increment, they voted to allow pre-moves as are normal in many online events including the Meltwater Champions Tour.
Both players were on increment and moving their bishops to and fro, and White had his premove ready. So when Jones chose 1...h3! Sasikiran autoreplied 2 Bd7?? h2 and resigned.
The first Fide World Universities Championship played online on the Tornelo platform last week produced a shock in the Women’s Rapid when the top seeded winner with 4.5/5, IM Iulija Osmak of Ukraine, was disqualified by a minimum vote (2-1 with 1 abstention) of Fide’s Fair Play Panel and placed last.
The 23-year-old was previously World U12 girls champion, was 2017 Ukraine Women’s Champion, is an international master at open level as well as a women’s grandmaster, and in her last year as an active over-the-board player before the pandemic played 150 competitive games.
So far Osmak has found support from former Fide world champion Ruslan Ponomariov, who played over her five games and saw “110%” no evidence of cheating; from her coach at University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, GM Bartlomiej Macieja; and from the Ukraine Chess Federation. The matter could go all the way to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne.
Fide has been at pains not to use the description “cheat”, but this is the first time that any player has been disqualified from a world title for alleged computer assistance. The chess governing body’s stance is weakened because they have not allowed Osmak to put her case directly, while stating that there is no right of appeal from the Fide decision.
Instead, Osmak has released a video analysing all her five games, offered to take a lie detector test, and explained that her eye movements, which might have caused suspicion, are caused because she has 16% vision in one eye.
Overall, this looks a potentially damaging decision, perhaps an own goal, by the world body. Time for the Fide President, Arkady Dvorkovich, who has an excellent trouble-shooting record in tricky situations, to step in?
3717: 1 Nf8+! Kd6 2 c7! Kxc7 3 Ne6+ and 4 Nxg5 wins for White.
