The default of a world top-10 grandmaster for writing motivational phrases on his scoresheet overshadowed Hikaru Nakamura’s victory in the $175,000 US championship at St Louis. The world No3 scored 8/11, beating Ray Robson, aged 20, on 7.5 and Wesley So, 21, on 6.5. Samuel Sevian, 14, totalled a slightly lucky 5.5 as he won two games from lost positions.
The event will be primarily remembered for the ninth-round game where the arbiter awarded So a zero after six moves. The former Filipino was scribbling self-encouraging messages on his scoresheet, a habit he apparently could not break despite several warnings. So had some serious family issues during the tournament and was struggling to keep concentration.
The global body Fide’s rules are ambiguous on whether So should have received just a time penalty or whether the default was right for persistent infringement. He had responded to the warnings by using a different sheet for his musings but for the referee this was not enough.
A newly published edition of the classic book Savielly Tartakower’s My Best Games of Chess 1905-54 (Russell, £23) brought back a memory of Southsea 1951 where the icon was playing the Dane Palle Ravn. Tartakower had a fine attack, and he was scribbling variations furiously on his score sheet. It emerged that he wanted to include the game in his book, but believed the publisher’s deadline was imminent. Nobody at Southsea dreamed of protesting. If it happened today Tartakower would be pilloried, his legend trashed.
Fide may have unleashed a monster when it started to introduce instant player defaults, first for those whose mobile phone rang and then for unfortunates who happened to turn up a few seconds after the game started. A personal view is that more use should be made of time penalties for such minor infringements, sinbins rather than red cards.
Severe penalties should be reserved for major crimes, like this week’s amateurish cheater Gaioz Nigalidze with his mobile phone and its chess program concealed under the loo paper at the Dubai Open. It did not help much: the game had only routine moves and Nigalidze stood slightly worse when he was defaulted.
He always used the same cubicle, which echoed a case from long ago at Bled 1931 where the Yugoslav Bora Kostic had his favourite toilet, on which the arbiter, who refused to take stronger action, stuck a notice: ‘Grandmaster Kostic’s study’. Fide can ban Nigalidze for three years for a first offence, 15 years for a repeat.
England’s youngest GM and joint champion, David Howell, has edged close to a 2700 rating, the level of the world top 50 and a must for invitations to elite tournaments, by sharing first prize with an unbeaten 7/9 in Dubai. Here he crushes a veteran Russian:
David Howell v Sergey Volkov
1 d4 d5 2 c4 c6 3 Nc3 Nf6 4 Nf3 a6 5 e3 b5 6 b3 Bg4 7 Bd2 Nbd7 8 h3 Bxf3 9 Qxf3 b4 10 Na4 e5 11 cxd5 cxd5 12 dxe5 Ne4 13 Qf4! Be7 14 Bd3 Bg5 15 Qh2 Qe7? 16 h4! Bh6 17 f4 g6 18 Bxe4 dxe4 19 g4 f5? 20 exf6 Qxf6 21 Rc1 Qe6 22 g5 Bg7 23 Bxb4 a5 24 Ba3 Nb6 25 Rc7 Bf8 26 Qb2! Rg8 27 Nxb6 Bxa3 28 Qxa3 1-0
3386 (by Dragoslav Djaja) 1 Nh6! If Rxh6 2 a8Q Rxa8 3 Rxa8 draws. If Rxa7 or a3-a2 2 Rg7+ Ke6 3 Rg6+ Ke5 4 Rg5+ Ke4 5 Rg4+ and the BK cannot escape the rook’s perpetual check along the g file.
