Peace in our time

The 6th round of this year's Staunton Memorial saw a major outbreak of peace, with five, mostly short, draws out of six games. One contributory factor was the complete absence of any international pairings - all six games saw English v English or Dutch v Dutch. Another factor was probably the impending rest day. Experience shows that the round before a rest day often tends to be relatively quiet, as players batten down the hatches and prefer not to risk going into the free day off the back of a loss. The third, and possibly decisive factor, was the very pleasant drinks party organised for 6pm, the attraction of which helped to ensure that all of the players were keen to finish their games early, so as not to waste valuable imbibing time!

The centrepiece game of the day was the clash between Adams and Short. The latter surprised his opponent by wheeling out Alekhine's Defence, a rare weapon in Short's armoury. The surprise worked, as Adams failed to play the most accurate line and then missed a tactic, being somewhat fortunate that no serious damage was done:

Here Adams played 15.Bd2? (correct was 15.Bf4), completely missing the reply 15...Nxc2! Luckily, though, White can regain his mislaid pawn by 16.Bxc2 Bxf3 17.Be3 Bd5 18.Bxa7, since 18...Ra8, followed by taking on a2 is risky, because of a later b3, trapping the bishop. Short instead played 18...Be6 19.Re2 0-0 20.Bc5  and accepted Adams' draw offer. ½-½

Van Wely is one player who usually plays for the full point in every game, but today he mixed up his opening lines and played 7.Qa4, instead of 7.Ne5. The former allows Black to sacrifice queen for rook and minor piece, with a very solid position, as has been known for over 25 years. L'Ami was not even born when the line was played in the game Kasparov-Andersson, Niksic 1983, but Erwin knows his theory, and duly rattled out the equalizing line. In fact, all 21 moves of the game had previously been played in L'Ami (!) - Stern, Bundesliga 2006.

Smeets-Werle was an even shorter draw, as was Sokolov-Timman. Peter Wells played the sharpest game of the day, against Cherniaev, and should certainly have won against the latter's extremely optimistic play. However, the clock was again Peter's great enemy, and he repeated moves in a position where he was objectively winning.

Play continued 30.Qf5 Rf6 31.Qg5+ Rg6 32.Qf5 Rf6 ½-½, but even in the final position, 33.Qh5 should give White a winning advantage.

The only winner of the day was Jon Speelman, who beat the luckless Bob Wade. The latter secured a decent position from the opening, but went wrong at a crucial stage:

Here, the wily veteran struck with the typical tactical blow 10...b5! Play continued 11.axb5 axb5 12.Rxa8 Qxa8 13.Nxb5 Bxe4 14.Nxc7 Qb7 15.Bxe4, and now Black could have secured a perfectly satisfactory position with 15...Qxc7, followed by 16...Qxc4. Instead, Bob chose the weaker 15...Qxe4? 16.Nc3 Qf5? (16...Qxd4 is better), and after 17.N7d5 Bd8 18.Be3 he remained a pawn down for no real compensation, eventually losing in 37 moves.

So, as we enter Wednesday's rest day, the scores are as follows: Adams 5, van Wely 4, Short, Speelman, Timman and Smeets 3.5, Wells 3, Cherniaev, L'Ami, Werle and Sokolov 2.5, Wade 0.