by Aviv Friedman

Ponomariov - Adams: Finally someone allows Mickey to play the Marshall attack in the Ruy Lopez! Eager for revenge for his round 1 loss to Adams, Pono makes sure he gets a full-bodied fight and picks up the gauntlet. It is nothing new that in this line, the game really begins well into the middle game since so much has been tried and analyzed before. 15…g5 is not a typo, it is a trick (16.Bxg5? Qf5!) designed to stop Rh4. White's exchange sacrifices are not new either: With a pawn in hand and the g5 weakness, a N on e4 or later, a pawn there would compensate for the material deficit. For example, after 18.f3 the game J. Polgar - Onischuk Batumi 1999 was agreed drawn without further fighting. 18…c5 looks new to me and only more testing would reveal how good it is. 23…Bb4? Has to be a mistake. Optically, it looked attractive, but after 24.Re5! white was clearly better. White coolly consolidated, stopping any tries Mickey had for some counterplay. 28.Ne3 was an obvious exchange sac, as we saw in the real game later on, the two passers are simply too much. Many thought black's only try to prolong the fight was 32…Rxe3, but maybe even that would not have sufficed. Around the time control black tried every coffeehouse trick in the book, but of course that was not going to work at this level. After continuing a bunch of moves without chance, much like Ponomariov did against him in round 1, Adams had conceded defeat. What a sweet equalizer for the FIDE champ.

This browser is not Java-enabled.