Friday, October 28, 2005

Ari Minkov Wins Kenilworth Classic


diagram
White to play after 25...Rge8.


Ari Minkov was the surprise winner of this year's Kenilworth Classic Game-30 tournament, which concluded last night at the Kenilworth Chess Club. Ari finished with 3.5 points and probably should have scored a perfect 4.0 but for falling a few seconds short to finish mating one opponent with King and Queen versus lone King before his flag fell (when it was declared a draw based on insufficient material for his opponent). The prize-winners were as follows:

First -- Ari Minkov (1951) - 3.5
Second -- Mark Kernighan (2212) - 3.0
Third -- Kenneth Chieu (2027), Maricio Camejo (2032), and Cesar Sorto (1942) - 2.5

Three interesting games from the final two rounds can be downloaded in PGN (with improved annotations since Friday). I hope to post a java applet Tuesday. The most interesting game of the night was that between Cesar Sorto and Kenneth Chieu, where the players braved the insane complications of the Anti-Meran, Botvinnik Variation. In the diagram above it is White to play and save the game...

Pictures to follow...

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