The Miles Report

by Tony Miles
European Championship
The inaugural European Individual Championship was held
recently at St. Vincent in the Aosta Valley in Northern Italy. It
attracted 121 entries, including 44 GMs, from an intriguingly wide
variety of countries. I had always thought that Europe extended
from the Urals in the East to the urinals in the West, though these
days it has become normal for this to include the whole of Russia,
perhaps even all the former Soviet republics (there was a
Turkmenistan representative) and Israel (which chess-wise is pretty
much a former Soviet republic anyway). However it seems that
anyone who has ever tried paella is now qualified to represent
Spain and therefore Europe. Hence the tournament included Ivan
Morovic, who until very recently used to play under the Chilean
flag, Zenon Franco who admittedly changed allegiance from
Paraguay some time ago, and Kamran Shirazi (ex-Iran/USA). The
guy listed as playing for Kuwait really has me stumped though.
It seems fairly clear that anyone who paid the entry fee and hotel
bill in advance was more than qualified in the organizers eyes.
Those who didn't, though, had more of a problem. My compatriot
Stuart Conquest decided to economise by not staying in an
"official" hotel. Hence he did not receive the "welcoming" letter
advising him that he would be excluded from the tournament if he
did not formally register and pay the entry fee and hotel bill before
the first round. On arriving for the first round he found that his
name was indeed omitted from the pairings.
However, when he did offer to pay he was quickly allowed to
rejoin, but with a half-point bye in the first round. Another player
to get a bye was the young Russian GM Pavel Tregubov, when his
scheduled opponent failed to show up. He though received a whole
point. Actually he was given the option of playing Conquest or
having a free point. Not entirely surprisingly he opted for the latter.
The star of the tournament, though, was undoubtedly the Polish
GM Tomasz Markowski. Seeded a modest 22nd he started with
2/4, losing to Timman in the fourth round. Then however he
produced an astonishing surge of five successive wins to open a
clear lead. Day after day higher rated players would see their
pairing against him, rub their hands in glee, only to walk away
from the board shaking their heads in disbelief a few hours later.
With two rounds to play Markowski had 7.5/9, with Byelorussian
Aleksei Alexandrov on 7 and a group of Malakhov, Kharlov,
Milov, Lutz, Tregubov and Chernin a further half-point back. In
the penultimate round Markowski had white against Alexandrov.
Fairly clearly two draws would be enough to clinch the title for
him. When he won a pawn just out of the opening it seemed that
the tournament might be decided with a round to spare, but
suddenly nerves set in. Alexandrov's pieces crawled toward the
Polish king and suddenly Markowski's charmed existence came to
an end.
With the chasing group all drawing, Alexandrov thus held the clear
lead of half a point over Markowski. With the white pieces against
Tregubov, he then only needed to draw, unless the Pole could
bounce back and beat Lutz with Black. Remarkably nerves struck
again, and Alexandrov blundered. Milov too joined the casualty
list, dropping a piece in a winning position. Markowski remarkably
had Lutz under sustained pressure. With every other game finished
Alexandrov, Kharlov and Tregubov had 8 and could only wait to
see if Markowski could convert his advantage.
Eventually Lutz managed to hang on so there was a four-way tie.
The tie breaks gave victory to Tregubov, with Alexandrov second
and Markowski sadly nudged into third place. This was even more
tragic for him, since the first two qualified both for the World
Championship and the new World Cup. Leading scores: 8 Tregubov,
Alexandrov, Markowski and Kharlov; 7.5 Lutz, Smirin, Malakhov,
Chernin, Fedorov , Galkin, and Tiviakov; 7 Hertneck, Milov,
Krasenkov, Timman, Ki. Georgiev, Azmaiparashvili, Fressinet,
Beliavski, Bauer, Romanishin and Miles.
One point I feel I should make here is that one feature of the tie-
break rules seems to me to be seriously wrong. The tie-break
system was sum of opponents' scores. But unplayed games were
counted as draws for tie-break purposes. This meant that
Tregubov's first round bye only counted as a draw for his
opponents. Hence, when he played one of his co-winners, he got a
tie-break of 8 while they got only 7.5. In addition, his nonexistent
first-round opponent counted as having 11 draws (=5.5) for tie-
break purposes. Yet Tregubov had a win scored from the first
game, seemingly giving 1.5 points for that game. Consequently, his
bye was pretty much a triple whammy for him - a bit too much of
an advantage in my opinion. I should point out that in fact his tie-
break was so much better than the others that in this case it did not
matter, but I hope FIDE will address this point before it does.
On a lighter note, my own tournament was a bit of a nightmare.
Sometimes things are just destined to go wrong: I arrived in Milan
on the evening before the tournament at 7:30, expecting to be met
by someone from the organisation. After an hour wandering around
I finally discovered Beliavsky. He introduced me to our driver,
who seemed remarkably uninterested in anything but explained
that we would have to wait for a delayed flight from Tel Aviv. A
further 2 hours later we finally set off, arriving in St. Vincent
around midnight.
Since the hotel deal supposedly included all meals, I enquired
about food. Silly me. "Oh no... We stop serving at 10."
Tired and hungry I went off in search of some beer and pizza,
eventually returning to my room some time after 3. I set my alarm
clock for lunch.
At 7:45 I was less than delighted to be woken by a power drill
digging up the road right under my first floor room. Ho hum...
Eventually I managed to change rooms to somewhere with a less
than deafening decibel level, but my sleep routine was destroyed
for the first few days. In the first round I managed to draw with
someone rated 2278, in the second with a 2101.
In the third round I at last achieved a win. Time to get back into
contention? Well ... just see what happened next
White: A.J.Miles Black: E.Berg
1.d4 f5 2.Bg5
One of the more reputable ways of escaping main line Dutch
theory.
2...c6
Quite a logical response. Black intends to develop his Queen and
then hound the Bg5, without allowing Qh5 mate (as in 2...h6 3 Bh4
g5 4 Bg3 f4 5 e3 fg?? 6 Qh5)
3 c4 Qb6
Probably more logical than Legky's choice of 3...h6 4 Bd2 (when
h6 became a source of regret) against me 10 years earlier.
4 Qd2 d6
Now Black is really ready for h6 and g5.
5 f4
Much the best way of dealing with the problem in my opinion.
5...g6 6 Nc3 Bg7 7 e3 Nd7 8 Nf3 Ngf6 9 Bd3 e5? (See Diagram):
If Black really wants to play a quick e5, he must preface it by Qc7.
10 c5
Surely very strong. If 10...dc, 11 de is murder, as are 10...Qc7 11
cd, 10...Qd8 11 fe and 10...Qa5 11 cd. Hence the black Queen is
forced to a very silly square. What was I missing I wondered? The
answer was given in the postmortem: Nothing; my opponent had
totally overlooked c5!
10...Qb4 11 fe
I was also tempted by 11 cd and 11 a3, but did not find anything
concrete. The relevant tactical point in all lines is that White never
has to worry about e4 because after Ne4, the black Queen is
hanging.
11...de 12 0-0
White is clearly better - the black Queen will have a very hard time
getting back into the game.
12...0-0 13 a3
Seeing nothing more conclusive, I decide to ram my e-pawn down
Black's throat.
13...Qa5 14 de Ng4 15 Bc4 Kh8 16 e6 Nde5 17 e7 Re8
'Til here pretty forced. Now I could take the exchange with 18 Ne5
Ne5 19 Qd8, but after 19...Qd8 20 ed (Q) Rd8 21 Bd8 Nc4 Black
will get at least one pawn and has excellent compensation. Hence I
decided to trust in my e-pawn and chose
18 Ba2! Qc5
Not much choice.
19 Rac1 (See Diagram):
A fascinating position. Obviously White is threatening Ne4-d6.
The obvious defence is Qb6, while Bf6 trying to snaffle the
irritating e-pawn is also critical.
On the former, White has a beautiful combination: 19...Qb6 20
Ne5 Ne5 21 Ne4! (anyway!) 21...fe 22 Rf8!+ and now if 22...Bf8
23 ef(Q) Rf8 24 Qd6! diagonalizes him, while22...Rf8 23 ef(Q)
Bf8 is met not by the tempting 24 Qd6 - because of 24...Bg7 - but
the elegant 24 Bd8! (See Diagram):
and when the Queen moves, Bf6 and Qd8 mating
On 19... Bf6 I did not want to play 20 Ne4. Not only because Black
may get away with Qe7, but also because of ...Bg5 when Black will
get a Rook and two pawns for two pieces and the e-pawn, White's
pride and joy, will have disappeared.
Hence I intended 20 Nd5 Qd6 21 Nf6! when after .. Nf3 22 gf Qd2
White has fantastic attacking chances for the Queen. For example
23 fg Re7 24 Rcd1 Qa5 25 Nd7! threatening Bf6. Or, probably
even better, 23 Ng4 threatening Bf6 mate, 23...h5 (seems best) 24
Rcd1 Qa5 and now probably the simplest is 25 Nf2 followed by a
full scale invasion on d8.
A third defensive try is 19 ... Nc4 but 20 Qd8 Be6 21 b4 looks very
good for White.
However, in the game my opponent surprised me with
19...h6
Naively I continued with...
20 Ne4 Qb6 21 Nd6
Surely White is winning the exchange, and Black is not even
getting the e-pawn. Again, I wondered what I had missed, but as
my opponent consumed nearly all his time I realised that again it
wasn't very much. In the postmortem he confessed - astonishingly
- that he had not noticed the threat of Ne4!
21...Bd7
Clearly hopeless. With Black now in time trouble too, I chose the
obvious
22 Ne5 Ne5 23 Ne8 Re8 (See Diagram):
Now, as my opponent observed, 24 Bf4 (or probably even stronger
24 Bh4 g5 25 Bg3 Re7 26 Qd6) 24...Re7 25 Qd6 forces the
hopeless Qd8. But I had seen a more crushing way: 24 Bf7 and if
24...Nf7 25 Qd7, or 24...hg 25 Ne8 Be8 26 Qd8 winning huge
amounts of material.
24 Bf7?? hg! 25 Be8 Be8 26 Qd8
Not much choice, otherwise the N will come to f6.
26...Qe3+ 27 Kh1 Ng4! 28 Qe8+ Kh7 (See Diagram):
And suddenly I realised my plight. The threat is Nf2... mating!!...
and on 29 Rc2 comes 29...Qe5! 30 g3 Qe4+ 31 Rg2 Ne3 and
White is most definitely not winning. The Queen on e8 is
comically helpless. Other Rook moves are even worse 29 Ra1 say,
29...Qe5 30 g3 Qe2. So...
29 h3
Hoping for 29...Qg3? 30 Qg6!winning, but...
29...Nf2+ 30 Rf2 Qc1+ 31 Kh2 Be5+ 32 g3 Qe3! (See Diagram):
Excellent centralisation. 33 Rg2 Be3 and a perpetual. There is
nothing to be done.
33 Qf7+ Kh6 34 Qg6+ Kg6 35 e8(Q)+ Kg7 36 Qd7+ Kh6 37
Qe6+ Kg7 38 Qe7+ Kg6 39 Qe8+ Kg7 40 Qd7+ Kh6 41 Qe6+
1/2- 1/2
So... a great defensive trick by Black? Well... actually no. You
guessed it. He missed 24 Bf7 too.