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Thursday, July 16, 2015

A little bit of history

Nowadays, no major chess tournament is complete without live transmission of the games on the internet. It is even quite commonplace now in Ireland. though this year the recently completed Irish Championships did not have live coverage, apparently because the ICU  has no electronic boards of its own.

The UCU recently announced that they had bought a number of electronic chess boards and it had already been trailed that the Ulster Championship is likely to have 6 games transmitted each round.

It's probably a good idea to trial the system in advance of the UCU's top tournament and the UCU did just that last night. Perhaps understandably (in case things went wrong) there was no big fanfare for the first outing of the UCU's new toy. However, I picked up a tip on Facebook and logged on yesterday evening to events at the Summer Tournament in the Bankers' Club where the top game of the night was all plugged in. The game can still be found here and it's a nice touch that the game can be downloaded in a pgn-file (which I hadn't seen before with the DGT Boards). So making use of that facility, I thought I'd treat you to an annotated version. This comes with a health warning, because I've never been able to play the Modern Benoni well with either White or Black.

Games
[Event "UCU Summer Tournament"] [Site "Belfast"] [Date "2015.07.15"] [Round "11.1"] [White "Pilkiewicz, Nicholas"] [Black "Masterson, John"] [Result "1-0"] [ECO "A67"] [Annotator "McAlister"] [PlyCount "53"] [EventDate "2015.05.06"] [EventType "tourn"] [EventRounds "21"] [EventCountry "NIR"] [WhiteClock "0:37:21"] [BlackClock "0:48:51"] 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 c5 4. d5 exd5 5. cxd5 d6 6. e4 g6 7. f4 Bg7 8. Bb5+ Nfd7 9. a4 O-O 10. Nf3 Na6 11. O-O Nc7 12. Bc4 a6 13. Qe1 Re8 14. Qg3 b6 ({ Snatching a pawn here with} 14... Bxc3 15. bxc3 Rxe4 {would give White plenty of attacking compensation after} 16. Bd3 Re8 17. f5) ({However} 14... b5 {was more thematic. Now after} 15. axb5 Nb6 $1 16. Bd3 axb5 17. Rxa8 Nbxa8 18. f5 c4 19. fxg6 hxg6 ({but not} 19... cxd3 20. gxf7+ Kxf7 21. Ne5+ Kg8 22. Rf7 $18) 20. Bb1 b4 {Black has counterplay}) 15. Re1 (15. e5 {seems more in keeping with the previous moves. After} dxe5 16. d6 Ne6 (16... exf4 17. dxc7 $1 fxg3 18. cxd8=Q Rxd8 19. hxg3 $18) 17. fxe5 {White would have a clear advantage}) 15... f6 {Heading to a hedgehog-type formation seems completely wrong in a Modern Benoni.} ({Black probably had to try} 15... Bd4+ 16. Kh1 (16. Nxd4 cxd4 17. Ne2 Rxe4 18. Bd3 Re8 19. f5 Ne5 {and Black should be OK}) 16... Nf6 {and if now} 17. e5 Nh5 $1 18. Qg5 Qxg5 19. Nxg5 Bf5 {with counterplay}) 16. f5 $1 { Black is in real trouble now} Nf8 17. Bf4 {The threat of Bxd6 is so strong that Black decides to give up the exchange. However it is to no avail as White plays very accurately from here on.} Re5 18. Nxe5 fxe5 19. Bg5 Bf6 20. Bxf6 Qxf6 21. Rf1 g5 22. h4 h6 23. hxg5 hxg5 24. Nd1 Ra7 25. Ne3 Ne8 26. Ng4 Qg7 27. f6 ({After} 27. f6 {White might try sacrificing his Knight for two pawns. One nice line now would be} Qg6 28. Nxe5 dxe5 29. Qxe5 Bg4 30. d6+ Kh7 31. Qe7+ Rxe7 32. dxe7 Qh6 33. f7) 1-0