Some Euro- Endgame

So we did some spur-of-the-moment coverage on chess.com/tv this morning of the 8th round of the European Individual Championship for kicks and giggles, and there were a couple interesting and crucial endgames going on that I wanted to check back in on once I got to the chess.com office.

First I checked in on Judit Polgar v. Gadir Guseinov. It would have been really fun to have watched this endgame together live; I swear I'm not all about tactics and vicious assaults!

Playing through the 10 moves I missed on the way to the office, here's the first quick question that popped into my head:

and why couldn't black just trade bishops by taking on g4?

ok, not to spoil all the fun by spoiling the suspense, but as I'm writing this, Judit has just won this endgame!! I was planning to look at how she did it anyway, so let's have a look:

Alright, solve the puzzle: and don't look it up at the official site (http://euro2.echecs.asso.fr/TOMA/)

Right on, Judit!! After a flurry of rook sacs and other crazy things, she showed she can grind with the best of them. A really instructive endgame (for this viewer at least).

Next up, here's the board 1 endgame between Polish #1 and 2700-fide Radoslav Wojtaszek and tournament leader Vladimir Potkin. In a tense game, Wojtaszek put a lot of pressure on the tournament leader, hoping to unseat him. However, after winning a pawn in a bunch of tactics, it would still require some great endgame play to knock him out~~

Well, those were some cool endgames! So, Potkin retains the lead, but he's joined by several players, including Mircea-Emilian Parligras, who we saw score a terrific short+sharp upset with the Najdorf against Cheparinov.

We're trying to arrange for GM Bojkov to cover the final round on Saturday on chess.com/tv

Cheers!