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Tuesday, December 29, 2009

A Single Rook Move

A single rook move

For years the favorites to win the European Championship have not changed: Russia, Ukraine, Armenia and Azerbaijan. However, this time Ukraine had to play without Ivanchuk. This year after an exciting tournament - and for the first time - Azerbaijan won gold in this four board team event. Silver and bronze went to Russia and Ukraine. A single rook move proved to be crucial - and was made by Daniel Stellwagen against Vugar Gashimov in the last round match between The Netherlands and Azerbaijan. Actually, before the last round it seemed as if Russia would safely win but the Russians failed to achieve more than a draw against Spain. Now Azerbaijan had a chance to win gold - if the team managed to beat The Netherlands. With a match score of 1.5:1.5 Gashimov and Stellwagen found themselves in a complicated, objectively drawish rook endgame. Now Stellwagen made the crucial mistake, which helped Azerbaijan to win gold.
Gashimov,V. - Stellwagen,D
17.ETCC 2009 Novi Sad, (9.2), 30.10.2009


So far Stellwagen had defended excellently. But now he played 70...Rf4? [Correct was 70...Re4] 71.Ke6 h4 [Now after 71...Re4+ White would play 72.Kf5 Tc4 73.f7 +-] 72.f7 Kg6 73.f8D Txf8 74.Txf8 Kg5 75.Ke5 1–0
This win made super GMs Vugar Gashimov and Teimour Radjabov new European champions - and like an impressive number of top players they annotated some of their games for the December issue of the Chess Base Magazine.
(source: December 2009 issue of ChessBase Newsletter)

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