Friday, September 7, 2012

China 2½ - USA 1½

Photo Tony Rich of STL Chess Club
Ouch! Look for the report at Chess Life Online.

3 comments:

Frederick Rhine said...

The Chess Life Online site has horrible commentary on the key game Ding Liren-Onischuk, erroneously claiming that Black erred in not "going for the famous drawn rook ending of f- and h-pawn." Black could have drawn much more easily than that. Much better is GM Henley's video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El_z5qQ6sN4&list=PLD4D249D0DBF8838F&index=11&feature=plpp_video. However, beginning at 3:11 Henley makes the bizarre claim that the K+R+BP+RP v. K+R ending is a win for the superior side. Of course it's not, as the endgame tablebases (e.g. http://www.shredderchess.com/online-chess/online-databases/endgame-database.html), and all the endgame books, will tell you.

Bill Brock said...

Agree that the commentary isn't quite on point. Some patzer found several games with this ending and posted them on the USCF forum.

Frederick Rhine said...

Nice research. For anyone who's interested, the games you cited are available online at http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1001958 http://www.365chess.com/game.php?gid=2662904 and http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1273106 Frigging unbelievable that Onischuk lost this. On the Olympiad live commentary the commenters (who at the time were saying that of course the ending would be drawn imminently) said that Onischuk was looking bored and staring at Ding, as if to say "forget it, you're wasting our time." I'm sure you heard about Naka's snarky tweet; I don't blame him.