Chess pair flounder with lacklustre play
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Your support makes all the difference.NIGEL SHORT and Michael Adams, Britain's two strongest chess players, have made the worst possible start to their world chess championship semi-final matches in Linares, Spain.
Yesterday, Adams's third loss to Anand brought the English tally to zero out of five, and the manner of their defeats has been as depressing as the score-line.
In Gata Kamsky, Short faced a player of immense determination and concentration. There is little to choose between them in terms of natural ability, but Short seems to have been suffering from a lack of energy at the crucial moments. He has still to recover fully from his defeat by Garry Kasparov last year.
Adams faces still greater problems against Viswanathan Anand. Most grandmasters' thoughts expand to fill the time available to them, but Anand is different. 'I get bored if I think about my moves,' he explained some years ago.
In world championship competitions, each player is allowed two hours' thinking time for 40 moves; Anand frequently uses less than an hour, and in top gear will polish off a game in 20 minutes.
By running his opponents short of time and disrupting their normal thinking patterns - most players become accustomed to taking a little rest between moves while their opponents are thinking - Anand has made a habit of hustling the world's best to defeat.
His second game against Adams was a fine example. Reaching a delicately balanced endgame directly from the opening, Adams seemed unsure whether he should be trying to win or to draw. Unsettled by Anand's speed and apparent certainty, he made a string of inaccurate moves and slipped to defeat.
Here are the full moves:
White: Adams
Black: Anand
1 e4 e5
2 Nf3 Nc6
3 Bb5 a6
4 Ba4 Nf6
5 0-0 Nxe4
6 d4 b5
7 Bb3 d5
8 dxe5 Be6
9 Nbd2 Nc5
10 c3 d4
11 Bxe6 Nxe6
12 cxd4 Ncxd4
13 Nxd4 Qxd4
14 Qe2 Rd8
15 a4 Qd5
16 axb5 axb5
17 Qe4 Bc5
18 Qxd5 Rxd5
19 Ne4 Bd4
20 Nc3 Bxc3
21 Ra8+ Rd8
22 Rxd8 Kxd8
23 bxc3 Ke7
24 f4 f5
25 exf6 Kxf6
26 f5 Nc5
27 Be3 Ne4
28 Bd4+ Kf7
29 Be5 Re8
30 Bxc7 Nxc3
31 Ba5 Nd5
32 Rb1 b4
33 Rd1 Re5
34 g4 Ne3
35 Rd7+ Ke8
36 Rd8+ Ke7
37 Rd3 Rxa5
38 Rxe3+ Kd6
39 Re6+ Kc5
40 Re5+ Kb6
41 Re1 Rb5
42 Kf2 b3
43 Kf3 b2
44 Rb1 Ka5
45 Ke4 Ka4
White resigns
Later, Nigel Short lost the third game of his world chess championship semi-final match against Gata Kamsky. Scores are now Kamsky 3 Short 0; and in the other match, Anand 3 Adams 0.
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