Staying the course

After a pause during the pandemic, the Hastings Chess Congress returned for its 96th edition in the days after Christmas, with renewed support from software company Caplin. A newly published book, The Chess Battles of Hastings by Jürgen Brustkern and Norbert Wallet (New in Chess, 2022), offers an enjoyable chronicle of the event’s rich history. Among the vignettes of congress luminaries, one anecdote caught my eye. One year in the 1980s, heavy snowfall caused the heating in the playing hall to fail, to which most players responded with an early draw offer. But grandmaster Murray Chandler persevered for five hours, he and his opponent ‘like two Eskimos, in woollen hats and winter coats’, and became joint winner thanks to his victory.

   I assume that this year’s winner, the Lithuanian grandmaster Sarunas Sulskis, had no quarrel with the elements, but his tournament victory owed much to doggedness at the board. In the second round, he squeezed a 120-move win from the notoriously toilsome endgame of king, rook and bishop against king and rook. In the fourth round, he reached a position which looks a whisker away from a draw, since the f7 pawn is attacked, and 73…Rd6+ 74 Ke5 Rd8 75 Kf6 achieves nothing.

Conor Murphy-Sarunas Sulskis

Caplin Hastings Masters, Dec 2022

Sulskis began with a crafty sidestep: 73…Kg8! If 74 Rxf7 Rd6+ 75 Ke7 Rd7+ 76 Kxd7 Kxf7 and the d-pawn is unstoppable. So: 74 Ke7 Rb8 75 Ra4? The decisive error. Back-pedalling with 75 Kf6! was necessary. After 75…Rb6+ 76 Ke5 Black must jettison the d-pawn, as 76…Rb5 77 Kf6 d4 78 Ra8+ draws comfortably. A better try is 75…Rb6+ 76 Ke5 Re6+ 77 Kxd5 Kg7, but the endgame is drawn. The simplest method is to harrass Black’s king and pawn from the front, beginning with 78 Ra1.