Adams wins Staunton Memorial, Wade loses all

With a quick draw against his closest rival Loek van Wely in the final round, Michael Adams secured victory at the 6th Staunton Memorial. 87-year-old Bob Wade lost all his 11 games.

Adams' performance was both expected and grand: as the first seeded player he sucessfully defended last year's title. Then he won with 8.5/11, ahead of Ivan Sokolov and Loek van Wely who scored 7.5 points. This year Adams' 8/11 was enough, as (only) Van Wely managed to gather 7.5 points.

For a moment it looked like the tournament was going to have an exciting finish, because in the penultimate round, Van Wely had narrowed the gap to the British leader of the tournament to just half a point, and he faced Adams in the final round. But, when Adams has White and wants a draw, he'll get a draw. Against anybody in the world. Of course he answered Van Wely's Sicilian with the quiet 3.Bb5+ and the score sheets were signed at move 15.

87-year-old Bob Wade lost all his games. About inviting him, the organisers said: "It has always seemed a shame to me to relegate veterans - who would like to play in mainstream events - to sections restricted to the over 60's or whatever - throwing golden oldies like Bent Larsen on the scrapheap is all too common. My belief is that our invite to Bob - far from being a negative move - was a blow against ageism in chess. Bob may do badly - indeed he may do very badly - but he wanted to play and I think his involvement is an interesting departure."

Well, he did badly, he did very badly. But, as Mig pointed out, this had probably more to do with his rating (2167) than with his age, although the two highly correlate of course. It must be said that Wade showed more fighting spirit than we could have expected and in his encounter against Sokolov for example, he was better for most of the game.

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Here are all decisive games from rounds 4-11 for replay (find round 1-3 games in our previous report):



The tournament organisers were holding up an original intepretation of the notion "internet coverage". The round reports by Steve Giddins were excellent, as always, but on the tournament website, the games (PGN) were usually only available with one day delay, and as it seems, nobody bothered to take photos. Their statement on this matter is just too hilarious not too quote in full:

A Note from the Organisers

There have been some rumblings on various web and blog sites about the speed with which we are putting up information on our website www.howardstaunton.com

Those who are disgruntled should remember that we are celebrating a master from the 19th century, a champion who played by candlelight and who lived in an age before communication became instant. In accordance with tradition we are playng the 6th staunton memorial at simpsons in the strand , where the immortal game itself was created in 1851. We opened the event with champagne and a candlelit roastbeef dinner at simpsons, and our philosophy is not to be intimidated by the cries for instant gratification which are so rife?

I have seen so many modern websites where the organisers feel their duty is done simply by having a live feed to the games-no notes-no explanations no atmosphere or background. we, on the other hand, take the view that we can gain more by going for a complete experience -not just speed. Our team which includes one gm, myself, and the fritz analysis engine , as well as Dr Schiller, Julian Simpole and Steve Giddins, sits down each day after being fortified by a traditional english breakfast of bacon, sausages, eggs toast and marmalade, and then we write a careful report and analyse what we consider to be the best game of each round.

Later that afternoon the games , commentary and analysis all go up on the website,hopefully generating a much richer read for the website visitors. By this careful method we found Nigel Short's brilliant missed tactical win with Nd6 which wd not even have been mentioned by the live games system operated by most other tournament websites-we like to believe we are a thinking website-not just a reproductive one!!

Ray Keene OBE

Links:

• "Adams and Timman lead at Staunton Memorial"
• Official website
• Games in PGN