Mystery game #32: A marathon battle, with a question to follow up

**Frank Dixon** · Sunday, 1st November, 2020, 05:28 PM

IM Yuri Lapshun (2450) -- NM Raja Panjwani (2200), Canadian Open, Kapuskasing 2004 (1). Played 2004-07-10, time controls 40/120, SD/60.
One very important thing to know about this game is that it was played under double accelerated pairings, in use for the first four rounds at Kap that year. It was on board 14, in an event with 124 players. White, an experienced IM and a player who was paid financial conditions, by the organizers, to come in to compete, to the very isolated and remote tournament site, as seed #14, would likely have expected to face an opponent in the 1700-1900 range in the first round. Instead, he got one of Canada's top young players, Raja at 2200, who was in good form, having just won the B14 of the CYCC.
White does develop some advantage, and tries hard to win, but Raja dug in and refused to yield; he played very well. White, a pawn up in a rook endgame, then gradually lost the thread of the game, and over-reached, allowing a tactic for Black to queen his h-pawn, with White now finding himself on the weaker side of Q vs R. White then has to defend for a very long time, and very carefully, to avoid losing. He sets up the well-known 'second rank defense'. At the end, White claimed the draw due to his intended three-fold repetition, indicating his intended reply 133.Ka7 to me, but not actually playing it on the board. He was following correct procedure with the claim; as well his claim is factually correct. The claim was verified by myself, an assistant arbiter for the Open, in partnership with the late IA Yves Casaubon, #2 arbiter at Kap. I let IM Lapshun know, when he was making his claim, that Raja had been my student for more than three years, until about 16 months before this game, and that I would not make the final decision myself, on his claim, for that reason. He agreed, and Yves made the final decision to award the draw, after I checked the moves. Actually, this game was very difficult to obtain the correct final score, since IM Lapshun had many errors on his score sheet. Raja, then 14, produced a score sheet which was much better than that of the IM, for accuracy. After spending many hours on that task, and overcoming perhaps 20 combined score sheet errors, we now have this game, the longest at Kap, for the records!!
We don't have a lot of clock time information available, but I will share what I have: at move 16, W-15 minutes, B-45 minutes used; at move 34, W-40 minutes, B-105 minutes.
On a personal note, with these tournament performances at Kap, as Raja's coach for more than three years, I became fully convinced that Raja would some day earn an international title at chess!! He did not disappoint me!!
I will add my question, hinted at in the subject line for this thread, in a subsequent post.

**Frank Dixon** · Tuesday, 3rd November, 2020, 05:44 PM

My question is this: Since Raja Panjwani and I had had a chess business relationship, I believed I should recuse myself from this ruling. IA Yves Casaubon, supervising me at the Open, respected this opinion, but his solution was for me to evaluate the situation, inform IM Lapshun of my connection with Raja, play through the game to check it, and Yves would make the final decision. That is what we did, and the players appreciated it.
However, I had not had any formal arbiter training at this juncture, although I had quite a lot of experience in big events. I made the call myself. Does the CFC, and / or FIDE, have a formal policy with respect to questions and scenarios like these? It would fall in the category of 'conflict of interest', which is not in itself an illegal thing; it is how this situation is handled, which is critical.

Respectfully submitted,
Frank Dixon
NTD, Kingston

Mystery game #32: A marathon battle, with a question to follow up

Mystery game #32: A marathon battle, with a question to follow up

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