Friday 24 July 2009

How to make a masters eyes light up

Despite waking up to -3 degrees this morning, Canberra turned on a perfect winters day for the ANU Co-Op Bookshop Simul. And IM Andras Toth turned out a perfect performance scoring 17 wins, no draws and no losses against the assembled opposition. The players were a mixture of Canberra club players (rated between 1200 and 1750) and adventurous passers by (including one visitor from Kazakhstan).
Under instructions to finish the simul under 1 hour and 45 minutes, IM Toth obliged, finishing the final game with 30 seconds to spare. He was helped by the opening choice of some of his opponents with no less than 4 French Defences (as far as I could see). Now if I was giving a simul, the French Defence would be the one opening I would love to see, as pawn on e5, Bishop on d3, and a queen heading for g4 or h5 is not only an easy plan to follow, but usually results in a quick knockout.
Oddly enough one of the games that looked like it would be over pretty quickly turned out to be the last game to finish. Milan Ninchich missed a tactical shot on move 14 and lost 2 pawns. However he dug in and missed a chance to draw right at the end with 48. ... Kd3 (instead of the losing 48. ... Be1).

Toth,A - Ninchich,M [B53]
ANU Simul , 2009

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 Nc6 4.d5 Ne5 5.Nxe5 dxe5 6.Nc3 Bd7 7.Bc4 Nf6 8.0-0 g6 9.Bg5 Bg7 10.d6 exd6 11.Qxd6 Qb6 12.Rad1 Qxd6 13.Rxd6 Ng4 (D)
14.Bxf7+ Kxf7 15.Rxd7+ Kg8 16.Rxb7 h6 17.Bc1
Kh7 18.Nd5 Rhf8 19.c4 Nf6 20.Nxf6+ Rxf6 21.Be3 Rb6 22.Rxb6 axb6 23.a3 Ra4 24.Rc1 g5 25.Kf1 Kg6 26.Ke2 Kf6 27.h4 gxh4 28.Kf3 Kg6 29.Ke2 Bf6 30.Kd3 Ra8 31.Rd1 Rf8 32.Ke2 Rd8 33.Rxd8 Bxd8 34.b4 cxb4 35.axb4 Kh5 36.f3 Bc7 37.Kd3 h3 38.gxh3 Kh4 39.Bxh6 Kxh3 40.c5 bxc5 41.b5 Kg3 42.Ke2 Bb6 43.Bg7 Kf4 44.Kd3 Kxf3 45.Bxe5 c4+ 46.Kxc4 Kxe4 47.Bb8 Ba5 48.Kc5 Be1 1-0

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

unless my game was counted as a draw! XD