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Your support makes all the difference.THE GIBTELECOM Masters finished last Thursday in victory for a quintet of players on 7.5/10: Alexei Shirov (Spain), Emil Sutovsky (Israel), Lev Aronian (Armenia), Kiril Georgiev (Bulgaria) and Zahar Efimenko (Ukraine).
In an event unusual for its high scores, there was a further five-way tie on 7 between Alexander Areshchencko (Ukraine), Vasilios Kotronias (Greece), Hikaru Nakamura (USA), Gabriel Sargissian (Armenia) and England's Danny Gormally.
As mentioned on Thursday, there was a live web broadcast every day by Stuart Conquest. This was a great success, attracting more than 12 million hits over the 10 days - more than twice the population of Gibraltar. The festival is only in its third year, but attracted more than 160 players, 120 of them in the Masters, and it is already becoming established as a seriously strong Open and a great success.
While he wasn't one of the joint winners, the greatest success of this year's tournament was Gormally who, after years of near misses, has finally made his last grandmaster norm to become England's newest grandmaster.
Gormally, who will be 29 in May, played a blinder of a tournament with a rating performance of nearly 2,700 against a field that included five players over 2,600. He completed his norm in style with this gutsy victory against the current World No 14. Gormally's opening choice was extremely brave, going for victory but with a high risk of defeat when a couple of draws would have been enough for the grandmaster norm.
Garry Kasparov himself took Dreev on in this line in the recent Russian Championship, and eventually won after choosing the even sharper 12.f3. As played, it became extremely unclear but the tide started to turn in Gormally's favour after Dreev missed 28.Rxa7, which, while it may not objectively gain the advantage - 28...Rab8, for example, is still very unclear - clearly shocked Dreev. Indeed, just five moves later White was already winning by force.
Danny Gormally
vs Alexei Dreev
Gibraltar 2005 (round 8)
Queen's Gambit Anti-Meran
1. d4 d5
2. c4 c6
3. Nf3 Nf6
4. Nc3 e6
5. Bg5 h6
6. Bh4 dxc4
7. e4 g5
8. Bg3 b5
9. Be2 Bb7
10. h4 g4
11. Ne5 h5
12. 0-0 Nbd7
13. Qc2 Nxe5
14. Bxe5 Bh6
15. b3 cxb3
16. axb3 0-0
17. Bd3 Re8
18. Ne2 Nd7
19. Bg3 e5
20. f3 Be3+
21. Kh2 exd4
22. fxg4 Ne5
23. g5 Nxd3
24. Qxd3 c5
25. Nf4 Bxe4
26. Qxb5 Bxf4
27. Rxf4 Qd5
28. Rxa7 Bf5
29. b4 Rac8
30. Qf1 Bg6
31. Rf6 Rc6
32. Qb5 Rec8
33. Qb7 Qe4
34. Rxf7 1-0
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