A very quick post as I’m playing my round 9 game in an hour and a half. Apologies for the slight delay in writing this update – my chesspublishing column is due on the 15th of every month and I had to get that out of the way first. In round seven I played the Dutch which surprised my high rated Ukranian opponent Miroschnichenko. He reacted with 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.Bg5 and got a small advantage but the position was very blocked up and I held comfortably. Strangely in the final position after 28 moves we still had all 16 pawns on the board!
In round 8 I played the son of the legendary Evgeny Sveshnikov. Vladimir is an FM closing in on the IM title and rated 2379. I expected a Sicilian but he surprised me and played the Alekhine (my third in my last four 1.e4 games!). I was worried he had an improvement over my games from Bunratty but I decided to see what it was. We followed my game against Nigel until he deviated but I had a comfortable advantage and won fairly easily. After the game he told me he hadn’t seen my games from Bunratty so his surprise weapon failed quite drastically.
Here is the game.
###pgn###[Event “Reykjavik Open”] [Site “Reykjavik ISL”] [Date “2011.03.15”] [EventDate “2011.03.09”] [Round “8.11”] [Result “1-0”] [White “Gawain C B Jones”] [Black “Vladimir Sveshnikov”] [ECO “B03”] [WhiteElo “2578”] [BlackElo “2379”] [PlyCount “64”] 1. e4 Nf6 2. e5 Nd5 3. d4 d6 4. c4 Nb6 5. f4 dxe5 6. fxe5 Nc6 7. Be3 Bf5 8. Nc3 e6 9. Nf3 Bg4 10. Be2 Bxf3 11. gxf3 Qh4+ 12. Bf2 Qf4 13. c5 Nd5 14. Nxd5 exd5 15. Qd2 Qf5 16. O-O-O a5 17. Qd3 Qd7 18. a3 a4 19. f4 g6 20. Rhg1 h5 21. Bf1 Bh6 22. Bh3 Bxf4+ 23. Kb1 Qe7 24. e6 O-O-O 25. exf7+ Kb8 26. Rxg6 Bxh2 27. Be6 h4 28. Rh1 Be5 29. Be3 Bf6 30. Rf1 h3 31. Rgxf6 h2 32. Bxd5 1-0%%%pgn%%%
Today I’ve got the Bulgarian GM Boris Chatalbashev who’s rated 2602. There are six players on 6.5/8 and then four of us on 6/8 so will have to go for the win today to try and get a prize. Hopefully he’s not a morning person J