The B-Open of the Sparkassen Chess Trophy now has a sole leader: Pola Seemann (photo) won on the third board against Henri Berlet. The Polish player is only 14 years old and has won all 5 games so far.
Today she played out a fighting rook ending and was rewarded for the long game by an instructive mistake by her opponent. Black's move was to use the well-known motif of the "body check". After 59... Ke4! 60.Txa4 Ke3 followed by ...f5, ...f4, ...f3 the pawn holds a draw, as the white king is too far away from the black passed pawn. But
59...Kg4?? was the decisive mistake, the black king is now on the wrong side and the white one gets to the pawn quickly enough:
60. Rxa4+ Kg3
61. Ra5 Kg4
62. Kc7 f5
63 Kd6 f4
64. Ke5 f3
65. Ke4 f2
66. Rf5 and White won
The other two top games on board 1 and 2 ended in draws, so now 7 players are on 4.5 points from 5 games. Tomorrow the young Oleksandr Kasapchuk from Schachfreunde Brackel will play with White against the leader.