"The rumor has been circulating on ICC recently that a certain result of the last round games at the New York Open was fixed -- that a game was deliberately lost in order to ensure the sharing of a larger prize."

I have looked at ICC and any discussion of a fixed game at the New York Open has long since vanished into cyberspace, so I cannot determine about which game they were talking. However, the obvious choice was the Smirin vs. Grischuk last round game, in which the winner stood to win the $14,000 first prize while the loser got almost nothing, but if the game was a draw both would get about $3500, depending on the results of the other games.

Meanwhile, Grandmaster Yermolinsky has reported on his website at http://www.concentric.net/~yermo/diary.html that Grandmaster Kudrin is suspected of dumping his last round game on three separate big money occasions: His last round loss to Naumkin at a tournament in Turkey, his last round loss to Kharlov in a 1998 tournament in Woburn, Massachusetts and his last round loss to GM Babakuli Annakov of Turkmenistan at a Foxwood's tournament two weeks ago.

According to an independent witness to the Annakov vs. Kudrin game, the dumping of that game by Kudrin was so blatant and obvious that anybody who looked could see what was going on.

I might mention here that I have never dumped a game to anybody and only once in my life has a game been dumped to me, although many times in my life I have been offered money for dumping a game. The one game which was dumped to me was when I was a kid and we fixed it so that it looked to all the spectators like an exceptionally hard fought game. (Tom Dorsch was involved). I even suspected that my opponent was holding out that if I blundered he was going to win the game anyway. I have never been completely sure that he really dumped. I might just have beaten him. The point is that if there is going to be a dump, the players could easily arrange it so that nobody could suspect. They do not have to do what Kudrin did, which was to leave the board to speak to somebody when his clock was running and he had only six minutes left to complete his game in a difficult position in sudden death time control.

In the last round at the New York Open, Ilya Smirin faced Alexander Grischuk on board one. Whoever won the game would win the tournament. However, the position was symmetrical, with both players having pawns only on the a, b, f, g and h files. A draw seemed likely, although Smirin had a slight pull. Observing that the winner would get $14,000 whereas, if the game ended in a draw, there would be a tie of 6 to 8 players for first prize money, Grandmaster Lombardy confidently predicted that somebody would win the game. Lombardy was right!

To question whether 16-year-old Grandmaster Alexander Grischuk might have dumped his last round game to Smirin, it is appropriate to look at the moves of the game.

It seems to me that starting with move 33, Grischuk made a series of weak moves. At one point, I feel that Grischuk failed to play a fairly obvious move which could have resulted in either a win for him or a draw. I am not a grandmaster and I have not checked this game with Fritz, so I could easily be wrong, but here are my observations.

[Event "New York Open"]
[Site "Manhattan"]
[Date "2000.05.11"]
[Round "9"]
[White "Smirin, Ilia"]
[Black "Grischuk, Alexander"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "C90"]
[WhiteElo "2665"]
[BlackElo "2580"]
[PlyCount "89"]
[EventDate "2000.05.11"]

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. O-O Be7 6. Re1 b5 7. Bb3 d6 8. c3
{ I have not studied chess openings since I was a kid, but I always thought that this move 
was a mistake and 8. h3 was required here, because Black can now play 8. ... Bg4. I suppose that opening theory must have changed since then.}
 O-O 9. d3 Na5 10. Bc2 c5 11. Nbd2 Nc6 12. Nf1 Re8 13. h3 h6 14. Ng3 Bf8 15. d4
cxd4 16. cxd4 exd4 17. Nxd4 Nxd4 18. Qxd4 Be6 19. Be3 Rc8 20. Qd2 Nd7 21. Rac1
Ne5 22. b3 Nc6 23. Bb1 d5 24. exd5 Qxd5 25. Qc2 g6 26. Rcd1 Ne7 27. Qb2 Bg7 28.
Bd4 Bxd4 29. Rxd4 Qc5 30. Rdd1 Red8 
{ Here Black offers a trade of rooks and seems to be offering a draw. Since Black is in a must-win situation, could not he have tried for more with 29. ... Nd5?}
31. Ne4 Rxd1 32. Rxd1 Qc7 33. h4 h5 ( This move creates a horrible weakness. I suppose White must be threatening 34. h5, but if White 
does that he creates risks for himself. He could later lose the h-pawn and the game. If Black had not played h5 here, there was no other way for White to make 
progress and the game could have ended in a quick draw.}
34. Ng5 Bf5 35. Qf6 Nd5 36. Qxa6 Bxb1 37. Rxb1 Rd8 
{ This exceptionally passive move seems to have been the beginning of the end. Should
 not Black have played 37. ... Nc3 defending the pawn on b5 and threatening Ne2+?} 
38. Re1 Qc3 39. Nf3 b4 40. Rd1 Qc5 {This move is forced because otherwise White wins the knight with 41. Rxd5 followed by Qa8+. 
Now, the game is lost and Black can resign.)
41. Qc4 Qd6 42. Qd4 Rd7 43. Ne5 Rd8 44. Nc4 Qf8 45. Nb6 
(One suspects that these last few moves were played by Grischuk just to let the audience see that his position was hopeless and resignable.) 1-0

I would appreciate it if someone would analyze this game with Fritz and report any conclusions as to whether this game was dumped or not.

Sam Sloan

On Tue, 23 May 2000 19:39:39 -0400, in rec.games.chess.politics "Alexander Shabalov" wrote:

Well, it looks like a clean game to me. (If not, then both players get my highest marks for artistic performance and got their money well deserved anyway:)) Also worth to be mentioned that another last round game Khenkin-Tregubov (on board two), where lower rated player had black pieces and less points, featured some heavy fighting, but didn't produce a winner. All in all, comparing to shameful 1998 NY Open, this one went amazingly fair.