Brilliance, drama and scandal at the German Championship

<img data-cke-saved-src="http://en.chessbase.com/portals/4/files/news/2011/germanch03.gif" src="http://en.chessbase.com/portals/4/files/news/2011/germanch03.gif" style="float: right; margin-left: 10px; margin-bottom: 5px; width=" 200"="" height="209">The German Championship was decided in a dramatic final round. Igor Khenkin managed to hold Daniel Fridman to a draw, while Jan Gustafsson won a tough game against Raj Tischbierek. Niclas Huschenbeth lost to Oswald Gschnitzer und René Stern to Rainer Buhmann, which left Khankin and Gustafsson tied for first, with 6.5/9 points each. The tie was broken by the sum of the Elo points of the opponents: Khenkin's totalled to 2488, while Gustafsson's were 2480. That left Igor Khenkin with the title of German Champion 2011.

Beating the master

In round six of the 2011 German Championship the defending champion, 19-year-old IM Niclas Huschenbeth from Hamburg, had to play with the white pieces against one of the big favorites, GM Jan Gustafsson, who is originally also from Hamburg and still lives there but now plays for Baden Baden in the German Bundesliga.

Jan also has his own web site and has published two Fritz Trainer DVDs with a repertoire for Black against 1.e4, starting with 1...e5 and the Marshall Attack against the Ruy Lopez. Based on Gustafsson's suggestion Jelena Dembo published an aritcle on the Evans Gambit in the latest ChessBase Magazine 142, which Huschenbeths reads regularly.

Maybe Niclas (picture above) he got his idea there to test Gustafsson's repertoire suggestion against the famous old gambit of captain Evans in a line that was also tested by Garry Kasparov against Viswanathan Anand in Riga 1995. After 13.c4!! it is almost impossible to defend Black's position over the board. The following notes by GM Mikhail Golubev appeared in Chess Today and are reproduced with the kind permission of the author.

Niclas Huschenbeth being interviews after the tournament

Video report and interviews, great to watch if you understand German

Player disqualified for cheating

The German Championship was marred by the disqualification of 23-year-old FM Christoph N. from Bannewitz, Germany, when he was caught consulting a chess program on his cell phone (which to the amusement of Stephen Fry Germans call a handy). N. admitted he had cheated and was disqualified from the tournament, which meant that the IM norm he had scored before the final round was rendered invalid.

Before the final round N. had won two games (against Christoph Zill and Hans-Joachim Vatter) and drawn six (against Daniel Fridman, Alexsandar Dranov, Christian Seel, Raj Tischbierek, Oswald Gschnitzer and Igor Khenkin). If he lost the final round against GM Sebastian Siebrecht he would still have scored an IM norm.

During the fatal game N. kept disappearing from the board, even when it was his move, for up to ten minutes. His opponent Siebrecht complained to the arbiter, and the two followed him to the toilet, where he had locked himself up in a stall. Siebrecht, who had a very tricky position, decided to offer N. a draw, which his opponent accepted. After this he was searched by the arbiter, who found a smart phone in his pocket. It had a chess program installed and the program was displaying the position five minutes before the end of the game against Siebrecht.

N. went to Siebrecht, admitted that he had been using his cell phone to cheat and apologised to his opponent. The incident will have serious consequences, which will be decided in the coming weeks.

• Official web site of the German Championship