Chess
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Your support makes all the difference.VLADIMIR AKOPIAN showed excellent technique in a hard rook ending to level the score against Alexander Khalifman at 1.5-all at the halfway stage of the Fide world championship final in Las Vegas on Tuesday before the rest day yesterday. Combat resumes today, as always, at 11pm London time.
Meanwhile, there has been plenty of action elsewhere, including the Mind Sports Olympiad at Olympia in London.
The Mind Sports, which started last weekend and runs until Sunday, features a whole gamut of different competitions of which the more familiar range from backgammon, bridge, Chinese chess, Countdown, creative thinking (set, incidentally, by William Hartston), cribbage, crossword solving, diplomacy, dominoes, Mastermind, draughts, Go, memory skills, mental calculation, Othello, poker, ouiz, Scrabble, Shogi, speed reading, chess problem solving - won by John Nunn - and chess itself.
The chess is divided into a variety of different competitions so that last weekend John Nunn won the 10-minute competition on Saturday and Julian Hodgson the five-minute competition; on Sunday David Norwood won both.
The main events are the Olympiad Championship, a 15-round quickplay (30 minutes a game) running from Monday to Friday in which Keith Arkell led with 5.5/6 rounds and later 7/8; and the MSO Masters, a 92-player nine- round Swiss, in which after four rounds Psakhis, Smirin, Ibragimov, Baburin, Golod and myself were first equal on 3.5.
In the absence of bulletins, I'm resorting to my own game.
Colin Crouch
Jon Speelman (white to play)
Black had just wrongly played 33 ...Ke7-f8?, probably the losing error - 33 ...Qd6 was tougher. The game concluded:
35 Kf3 was more sensible to keep some cover. If 39 ...Qf4 40 Qxc6 Qxf3+ 41 Ke11 escapes the checks or 39 ...Ke8 40 Be6! is murder. The bishop ending seems quite won. If 51 ...Bxc2 52 Kxc2 Kc6 53 Kd3 Kxc5 54 Kc3 White wins the pawn ending. 62 ...Kb7 was tougher though 63 Kd4 Kc6 64 Bc8 Kc7 65 Be6 Kc6 66 Bf5 puts Black into zugzwang, e.g. 66 ...Bf1 (or 66 ...Bd1 67 a6) 67 Bd3 Bh3 68 a6. At the end 67 ...Bg2 68 Bd7 Bf3 69 Bc6 is simple.
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34 Qc5+ Ke8
35 f3?! Kd8
36 g4 Qe8
37 Kf2 Qd7
38 Bf5 Qc7
39 Kf1 Be8
40 Qxd5+ Ke7
41 Qc5+ Qxc5
42 dxc5 Kd8
43 Kf2 Kc7
44 Ke3 Bf7
45 Kd4 Bb3
46 Be4 Bd1
47 c4 bxc4
48 Kxc4 Bb3+
49 Kc3 Bd1
50 Kd2 Bb3
51 Bc2 Bd5
52 Bxa4 Bxf3
53 Bd1 Be4
54 Bc2! Bf3
55 Bf5 Kc6
56 Ke3 Bd1
57 Kd4 Bb3
58 Kc3 Bd1
59 Kb4 Bf3
60 a4 Be2
61 a5 Kc7
62 Kc3 Bd1?!
63 a6 Bf3
64 Kd4 Kb8
65 c6! Bxc6
66 Kc5 Bf3
67 Kb6
Black resigns
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