GM Larry Kaufman's Final Word on the World Senior
By GM Larry Kaufman   
November 8, 2009
In round ten of the 2009 World Senior Championship, I quickly achieved a winning position as Black against IM Rukavina, but I made a serious miscalculation on move 21 after which I had to bail out to a draw. But in the final round, I won in only 26 moves against GM Nikolai Pushkov, rated nearly 2500, which puts me in a seven way tie for third place along with Bo Jacobsen, Algimantas Butnorius, Vitaly Tsheshkovsky, Oleg Chernikov, Lev Gutman and Mihai Suba. All of the above are GMs except for Bo Jacobsen.

Here is my win as White over Pushkov:

3678 

After 22.Qc2, I'm already winning or close to it but 22...c5?? lost instantly to 23.f5! gxf5 24.gxf5 cxd4 25.fxe6 Ka8 26.e7.

So I maintained my record of having a won or at least very favorable position by move 21 in every game except the loss to Tsheshkovsky.

The two winners with 8.5 are Miso Cebalo and Janis Klovans, with Cebalo winning the World Championship by superior tiebreak (cumulative) points.   

In the women's section Elo favorite GM Nona Gaprindashvili recovered from her poor start to finish with a decisive 7.5 out of 9 clear first place. 

The second best American score was IM James Sherwin at 6.5, not a bad result at age 76. Jude Acers finished with 6 out of 11. He and I and several other players missed our flights home from Milan and have to stay overnight because the bus left nearly an hour late. Next year's event was announced, again to be in Italy in late October.

See an interview with Larry Kaufman after his big win in last year's World Senior. Also read Larry's prior reports on a clock malfunction and a comeback,  on arriving at the World Senior and the early rounds.