John Saunders reports: the fourth day of the 4th Kingston Invitational (15 August 2025) saw the winner of the IM norm event decided as Polish GM Jakub Kosakowski secured a 1½ point lead going into Saturday's final round which means he can no longer be caught. He has 6½/8 and in sole second place is now Spanish IM Ivan Valles Moreno with 5. Sharing third place are South African FM Roland Bezuidenhout and Mexican FM-elect David Maycock Bates on 4½, which means that they are both out of range of IM norms.
Jakub Kosakowski, winner of the 2025 Kingston All-Play-All tournament with a round to spare.
The two Norwegian FMs are dominating the Open Swiss tournament.
FM Gunnar Lund (Norway) leads the Open Swiss on 6½/8 with one round to go.
All-Play-All Tournament, Round 7 (15 August)
Another lively round saw three decisive games, with GM Jakub Kosakowski once again extending his lead over the field to 1½ points.
The quickest game in terms of moves played was Supratit Banerjee's win with White against Adam A Taylor. Scarcely out of the opening Black blundered away a pawn. Black responded by whipping up a snap attack against castled king. It was quite potent and would surely have downed many a lesser player but not Supratit Banerjee, who found a series of accurate moves to clinch the win. His 21 Bc5 move was very classy.
Supratit Banerjee
Adam A Taylor
GM Jakub Kosakowski restored his substantial lead by defeating fellow Pole FM Liwia Jarocka in 31 moves. The opening was a Giuoco Pianissimo which became less 'piano', when Black changed her mind and captured on e3, thereby opening the game up. White's initial attack was rebuffed but Black failed to find the most solid defence to the second wave.
Jakub Kosakowski vs Liwia Jarocka
Roland Bezuidenhout vs David Maycock Bates started life as a Botvinnik Nimzo-Indian and was fairly level until Black retreated his knight to c8 on move 23. White shaped up to take advantage of this lapse but then unaccountably relocated his bishop to a worse diagonal when he could have applied a strong squeeze. Black then gifted him a promising endgame opportunity but White chose an inferior way of winning a pawn, reaching a rook and pawn ending with only a minimal hope of success. The game went on to 63 moves before a draw was agreed.
Roland Bezuidenhout vs David Maycock Bates
Ivan Valles Moreno played another non-theoretical queen's pawn opening against Graeme Buckley. The downside of these all-purpose, one-size-fits-all systems is that they lack bite. By move 13 Black had comfortably equalised. White tried to mount some sort of kingside attack but by the time he had got his pieces into position, Black had defended adequately and started to harass his pieces on the queenside. Black won a pawn and then beat off an attack spearheaded by the g-pawn. White gave up two rooks for the queen but the position continued to worsen. Then, just for a fleeting moment, White had a chance to hold but the chance went begging and Black managed to win.
The longest game of the round featured Peter Lalic - a name to strike terror into the hearts of arbiters the length and breadth of London and Surrey, not to mention annotators. And, would you believe it, it happened in the same round of the tournament and the same day of the year as 2024 when he perpetrated his record-breaking 272-move atrocity here in Kingston. However, this year's marathon move-fest was less than half the 2024 record at 131 moves.
Playing through the game I almost fell asleep at move four as the players started with the toothless 1 d4 d5 2 Bf4 Bf5 3 e3 c6 4 Nd2 Nd7. Peter Large, playing White, seemed but a walking shadow of the young firebrand I recall playing for my beloved Mitcham CC 30-40 years ago. "We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Large... that we have... that we have", etc, etc. Large played a weird rook lift to a3 and then across to c3 where it soon got trapped. It looked dreadful and I wouldn't have given tuppence for his chances thereabouts, but Lalic allowed him to shore his position up and he staged an improbable recovery. A whole slew of material then disappeared from the board, leaving White with QB+5P vs QR+2P, which was probably about equal. At move 55 the queens came off and it suddenly became horribly complicated, with White passing up a chance to win, albeit of engine-level difficulty. Later White missed another winning chance before fortune swung round yet again and there were three winning opportunities for Black before the game finally settled into a dead draw around move 76. The subsequent 55 moves were inconsequential. The game went on so long that the start time for the next round had to be set back half an hour.
For the masochists among the readership, here is the score of the game with bare notes.
___________________________________________________________________
All-Play-All Tournament, Round 8 (15 August)
The game between Peter Lalic and Jakub Kosakowski was a Caro-Kann, Advance Variation, and lasted just 15 moves, which probably suited both of them. Peter Lalic had just finished his marathon seventh-round game, for which reason the game had been postponed one hour. For the Polish GM it made fairly sure of his first place in the event as he already had a 1½ point lead.
Adam A Taylor vs Liwia Jarocka started life as an English Opening, but White adopted a rather bizarre strategy which cost him a piece on move 20. It looked hopeless but Black followed it up ineffectively and her advantage dwindled to the point that she was probably glad to agree a draw only nine moves later.
Adam A Taylor v Liwia Jarocka
Peter Large tried a Nimzowitsch Defence (1 e4 Nc6) against Graeme Buckley but White emerged from the opening with a substantial edge. We've seen a number of games in this tournament where the advantage has swing back and forth between the colours but this wasn't one of them. White generated some play on the kingside which wasn't matched by counterplay on the other wing where his opponent's pieces remained cramped and his queen and rook out of play. Soon a pawn fell followed by a general implosion of the white position. A good win for Buckley to reach a 50% score. Large finds himself languishing in last place.
Graeme Buckley vs Peter Large
Supratit Banerjee was well beaten playing White against Roland Bezuidenhout. He countered Black's Sicilian with 3 Bb5 but then seemed to mix systems after developing with 8 Nc3 and 9 d4. The resultant position was rather insipid, allowing Black easy equality, which soon evolved into a positional plus. In desperation White tried 17 Bg5 but it cost him the exchange and two pawns by move 20 and the rest of the game was easy for Black.
Supratit Banerjee vs Roland Bezuidenhout
David Maycock Bates had a chance of an IM norm if he could score 2/2 but a calamitous loss to the Spanish IM Ivan Valles Moreno put an end to that ambition. Playing White the Mexican FM-elect played a long slab of Ruy Lopez theory with an optimistic 13 g4 at the end of it, where my chosen adjective is probably a euphemism. Valles Moreno countered with an immediate 13...h5 and it was apparent that White was on the defensive from that point forward. However, the lapse wasn't fatal and White gradually fought his way to at least near equality. However, another example of misplaced optimism on move 43 cost him the game.
No comments:
Post a Comment