Bänziger vs Rodi

The Italian with 4.d3 does not give White fire, it gives him time, and Bänziger uses it: 5.O-O, 6.Re1, 7.a4, 8.Ba2, the bishop shuffle to a2 in front of his own queen. The weak square on the black side is d5. As long as bishop and knight are in front of it, it is a square under watch; the moment they leave, it is a square the next white piece takes.

That was the question on move sixteen. After 14...Bxa2 15.Rxa2 Bg7 the black bishop that would have looked from e6 at d5 was off the board; the white knight jumped from e3 to d5, where nothing attacks it. Bänziger spent thirteen minutes forty-six on the move, and the rook on a2 is the one reason the think paid off: recapturing with the rook takes nothing from d5.

The rule for your own games: when a trade removes the piece that covers a weak square, the square is the next step, and not a pawn move on the other wing. Nothing may sit between the removal of the defender and the occupation of the square; do it the other way and the opponent gets to play the one move that covers the square in retrospect.

Between move sixteen and move twenty-eight, what happened is what happens between two masters when neither loses the thread. Bänziger played 17.b4 instead of 17.Qb3, which cost a little edge, took the queen trade on move twenty-four, and went for a clean material count with 25.Nxd6. After 27.Na5 White was a third of a pawn better: for a grandmaster a beginning, for two International Masters an open question.

The move the position asks for after 28.Kf1 is 28...R8d6 29.f3 Bf8 30.Ke2 f5, the rook out of the a-file corner to the sixth rank and the continuation that holds the balance. Both clocks stay above twelve minutes, and the game goes into a technical ending in which nobody forces anything.

The move played was 28...Rd1+, the check with the rook that already stood well. It looks like simplification, and it is a tactical error in those words: after 29.Rxd1 Rxd1+ 30.Ke2 Rc1 31.Kd2 Black is on the first rank with one rook and no follow-up, while the white knight on a5 fixes the black c6 pawn and the white king marches into the middle. Rodi had twenty-six minutes on his clock when he played it, so neither in time trouble nor caught by surprise. Objectively it is a mistake; humanly it is the move that suggests itself if you want to stay active and do not see the quiet reply.

The rule for your own games: a rook trade with check is a simplification only if the remaining rook does something. If it just stands well, the trade is the opposite.

From move thirty-eight, Bänziger's clock went under five minutes for the first time in the game, and in this round it stayed there. Three moves to the time control, six minutes thirty-five on his own clock, sixteen minutes seventeen on the opponent's. The position was clearly better for White: the passed a-pawn ready to double with b4, the knight on c6, the rook on a2 with an open pawn structure, the black bishop on f8 with nothing to look at.

The move that would have converted this directly is 38.a5. Order first, pawn second: after 38.a5 Kg7 39.b5 axb5 40.a6 Bc5 the a-pawn walks to a6, and the black bishop has to give itself on c5 for it to stop the promotion. White comes out a bishop for a pawn to the good.

The move played was 38.b5, the other pawn, in about five minutes of thought. That left a pawn advantage, which is enough in an ending of this kind, but not what 38.a5 would have put on the board. The rule for your own clock: when there are two passed pawns available and one of them triggers a forced sequence, that one is calculated first. The move that comes out of the sequence is the candidate; the other pawn move is the comparison. In time trouble the order of comparison matters more than the comparison itself.

The rest of the game was the conversion, in which the two clocks keep their own rhythm. The white pawn stepped to b6 on move forty-three, to b7 on move forty-five, and Black put the bishop on c7, the square from which it stops the pawn. Bänziger manoeuvred the knight to e3 on move forty-six instead of c4, back to c4 on move forty-seven, and the white king stepped forward: 48.Kc3, 49.Kd4, 50.Kc5. The intermediate moves were technically a shade imprecise, but the position let them stand.

On 50.Kc5 Rodi replied with 50...f4, the wrong pawn. The move that holds is 50...Bb8, the bishop that stops the pawn from behind; after that White has to find the conversion with the king. After 50...f4 the one defending piece was off the blockade, and the promotion was there: 51.b8=Q Bxb8 52.Rxb8, and White is a bishop for a pawn to the good, with rook and knight against rook.

Bänziger spent ten minutes twenty-three on the promotion move; after it three minutes twenty-one stood on his clock, and the order of the mating sequence was still to be found. On move fifty-four he played 54.Ke5 instead of 54.Rb7+, a king move that comes from the centralising idea and lets the fastest forcing sequence go. Rodi answered with 54...h5, and from there the longer variation stopped helping either side. After 55.Rb7+ Kh6 56.Kf6 Rxg2 57.Ne5 h4 58.Rb8 Rodi resigned.