Its been rather a long wait since the previous article in this series, but I hope you'll agree that all good things are worth waiting for. Here we come within an ace of witnessing a KCC Grand Master scalp - even if it is a GM that none of you have ever heard of!
The game was played in Rhodes at the recent World Seniors' Team Championships, on Board 1 in the match between Finland and England 3, and features, as White, GM Yrjo Rantanen, against our own Andy Baruch. Despite falling some way below his lifetime peak of 2465, Rantanen still had a near 250 rating point edge over Andy, so the odds were very much stacked against our brave warrior. But in a very tense and exciting game, in which both sides launched the kitchen sink at their opponent's kings, Andy had the chance to land a killer blow. Unfortunately the moment passed, and although he was still better, there was no obvious breakthrough. Andy should have reconciled himself to a draw, but after several hours of knife edge chess, he went and spoiled everything, probably through tiredness and lack of match practice, by a one move blunder. I can speak from experience when I say its very tough to put these GMs away. They don't like losing, however ancient they may now be!
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