[chessmind] Dennis Monokroussos: 4-way tie at the SPICE Cup, Russian wins match with China

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Posted by Dennis Monokroussos:
4-way tie at the SPICE Cup, Russian wins match with China
http://chessmind.powerblogs.com/posts/1222658277.shtml


   (Spice, cups, and china: are we talking about chess or dinner? Let's
   assume it's chess; after the post I can think about dinner.)
   Varuzhan Akobian and Leonid Kritz were tied at the beginning of the
   last round of the [1]SPICE Cup; conveniently, they were paired.
   Akobian had White, but with his safety-first approach was unable to
   get anything going, and the game was a fairly short draw. Four players
   entered the last round half a point behind, and two of them - Pentala
   Harikrishna and Alexander Onischuk - managed to win. That left the
   four of them tied for first (with 5.5/9), and Harikrishna had the best
   tiebreaks.
   Russia-China: at last I understand the scoring! The overall totals are
   irrelevant. What counts are the team scores, by gender and time
   control. Thus after the classical games, the score was 1-1, because
   the Chinese men beat their Russian counterparts 14.5-10.5, while the
   Russian women returned the favor with a 13.5-11.5 tally. After the
   rapid games, the Russian team led 2.5-1.5 overall, because the Russian
   men won 28-22 while the womens' teams drew 25-25. Finally, in the
   blitz the Chinese men drubbed the Russian men 14-6, but a narrow 11-9
   win by the Russian women meant that the Russian team won the match by
   a 3.5-2.5 score.
   [2]I've attached a game from the last round of the SPICE Cup, a win by
   Onischuk over Hannes Stefansson. A lively opening turned into a
   complex, tactically wild middlegame, and then resolved into a rook
   ending where Onischuk pulled out an elegant win. It's unannotated, but
   trying to figure things out it's not a bad exercise for the reader.
   (And if you're interested only in entertainment, I think the game
   succeeds on that level as well.)

References

   1. http://monroi.com/2008-spice-cup-home.html
   2. http://chessmind.powerblogs.com/files/onischuk_stefansson_spicecup2008.htm