Monday 1 October 2012

2012 Ryde-Eastwood Weekender - Illingworth wins for a third time

Illingworth v Ayvazyan
(Soon to be confirmed IM) Max Illingworth has won the 2012 Ryde-Eastwood Weekender, bringing up a hat-trick of victories in this tournament. Going into the final round he was paired against tournament leader Armen Ayvazyan, and needed a win to overtake Ayvazyan. Borrowing a page from the Solomon book of endings, Illingworth pushed hard to win what looked like a drawn ending, first sacrificing an exchange, and then a piece to force a promotion. This resulted in a QvR+P position where Ayvazyan tried to set up a fortress, but more pressure from Illingworth eventually resulted in the rook going to the wrong square, and Illingworth found the zugzwang he needed to take the point, and the tournament.
IM George Xie and FM Igor Bjelobrk both won their final games to overtake Ayvazyan to take equal second on 6/7, while Ayvazyan had to be content with outright 4th. A large number of players finished in a tie for 5th, with Ari Dale and Allen Setiabudi both having impressive tournaments. There were also some interesting finishes further down, with the Willathgamuwa brothers (Kevin and Rowan) both drawing their round 7 games to finish on 4/7, and share the Under 1600 prize.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

In the position shown,
if its
WTM - Qg8 and mate in 42
BTM - Kg5 or Kg6 loss in 44

Using Table bases
http://www.k4it.de/index.php?topic=egtb&lang=en


MN

Shaun Press said...

Yes. After the game there was some debate about whether Black could hold the position, and the consensus was that he could. However the tablebase does say different (assuming I remembered the position correctly). I was counting the moves in case of a 50 move claim, and it was around 42 moves after the pawn promoted that Black lost.