Pawn maneuvers decisive in Utut's second draw

JAKARTA (JP): Pawns were so dear for both Indonesia's number one chess player Utut Adianto and Poland's Michal Krasenkow that they took four and a half hours just to support their promotion in the Gunadarma International Chess Tournament's second round yesterday.

However, these strenuous, time-consuming efforts only resulted in a 46th-move draw. Deadlock had seemed inevitable by the 44th move.

It was the second draw for both grandmasters, who have the same elo rating, 2,605.

Playing with the black pieces, Utut succeeded in making Krasenkow accept his favorite Queen's Gambit defense. However, Indonesia's chess wizard was unable to turn the game into a brisk zig-zag as he usually does because Krasenkow played very cautiously.

The prevailing peace, however, could not be maintained after the 15th moves as both were weary of seesawing. "Both players adopted risky but highly accurate maneuvers prompted by the stealthy advances of both sides' pawns," chess analyst Gunawan, who is also the chairman of the Gunadarma university chess club, commented.

"Both Utut and Krasenkow seemed to focus heavily on how to support the progress of their pawns. It seemed that they used their queens, knights, rooks and other sources just to reach this end," he said.

In other matches, Eugene Torre of the Philippines beat Ivan Sokolov of Bosnia-Herzegovina after 53 moves on a Slavia defense. It was the longest match of the day at five and a half hours.

Indonesian international master Dede Liu, who entered the tournament with a wild card, managed to tie with Lubomir Ftacnik of Slovakia after 52 moves on a Slavia defense. "It was really special given that Liu played with the black pieces and that there is a difference of 205 in elo rating between them," said Gunawan, who heads the tournament's organizing committee. (arf)