Wednesday, April 07, 2010

SIO 2010 Begins

What is it about knights?

In last year's SIO, former Australian Junior Champion (1982) Paul Broekhuyse resigned his position after a knight fork. Except that his opponent's move was actually an illegal one.

In today's first round of Sydney International Open 2010, it happened again, this time to no less a seasoned player than grandmaster Daryl Johansen!

Ansell, A - Johansen, D., 1-0

It looks like that knight made the supposed-to-be-impossible f4-h2 maneouvre. And now: 32... Rb4 33. Nf3 One... 33...Nh5 34. Ng5 Two... 34...Nf6 35. Ne6 BANG! The GM is kaput! 1-0

Doubtless both players were in severe time trouble and simply overlooked the mishap. Such is chess.

Coverage of the SIO tournament is here.

7 comments:

Mr Knight Bishop said...

amazing I never knew a Knight could move like a bishop when needed, how handy ! (haha)

Clearly the lesson from this game is when evaluating a position after your opponent's move , the first thing to check is -"was my opponent's move legal ?" :)

Anonymous said...

Johansen was not in time trouble at all - he had ten minutes left. Ansell had about a minute and a half.

Anonymous said...

Was Johansen at the board when the move was played?

Anonymous said...

Yes.

Jimmy Liew said...

Can such an illegal move stand after the game is finished? I mean, should not the arbiter award the game to Johansen after the mistake is discovered? What does FIDE rules say about this situation?

Anonymous said...

Signed scoresheets, nothing else matters!

Kevin Bonham said...

Re Jimmy's question, illegal moves can only be corrected "during the game" and not after the game has finished. See article 7. FIDE rules are very clear on this. Once the game is over any illegal move found to have been played during the game, even if that move induced a resignation, cannot be corrected and the result stands.

As for signed scoresheets, they are not quite the be-all-and-end-all. If the result that is signed for by the players is not the correct result the arbiter may decide to rectify it. But that is different to a case where players sign off on a correct result and an illegal move is later discovered.