Round 11 GM Simon Williams v FM Jonathan Hawkins 0 – 1

The money game!

The last round has finally arrived and the pressure is now firmly on. In order to secure a decent money prize, Simon must win. He faces FM Jonathan Hawkins, a player who has improved enormously over the past few years. Here’s how the game panned out:

Simon decided to play the Four Pawns Attack against the King’s Indian. On move 11, he played Kh1 – a fairly new idea which was recently featured in New In Chess. However, much to Simon’s dismay, Jonathan successfully showed that the idea in question is flawed by playing 13… Bc6. Simon then had to waste precious time maneuvering his king back to g1.

After 19… d5, Black had achieved a notable advantage and moments later White was left with an inferior position. Indeed, Black found a neat way to gain a material advantage on move 25 by playing Bxe5 in the position below:

Simon’s position soon crumbled after this tactic and despite having a passed e-pawn, he was unable to make any progress due to the activity of Black’s pieces. The game ended on move 38 in Black’s favour. Sadly, this second consecutive defeat left Simon out of the prizes.

Ginger GM would like to take this opportunity to congratulate GM Mickey Adams (British Champion 2010) and IM Jovanka Houska (British Womens Champion 2010)