Poetic justice

Serbian chess association is now "in turbulent period" so to speak, several fractions are fighting for power, and the same situation is with Belgrade chess association. The results are canceled Belgrade "winter open", and low number of participants in Serbian ch-semifinal - only 51. Normally three times more fight for places on round-robin championship.

The winner was shadow favourite Miroslav Markovic, 2 times champion.

Where is that poetic justice?
Well, first - introduction.
Coach of Serbia's women's team is Branko Damljanovic, one of our leading players and several times' champion.

This year there broke a little scandal, when he didn't put Adela Velikic in the team, although she was champion for last year. It was unwritten rule that champions are always in the team, not necesserilly on the first board but n the team.

Now comes the justice.

In the last round of this semifinal they met.
Adela Velikic chose to play with men.
Damljanovic was white and desperatly needed the win.
Had he won, he would have qualified (4 places are leading to championship).

But he lost.
He had advantage during the most of the game, but around 40th move the position was equal.
44. Na5? was mistake in overstretched effort to avoid draw.
But the game lasted another 40 moves, and advantage went like a pendulum to both sides, until Damljanovic made last blunder.

Semifinal' winner Markovic is also favourit for the title in championship in April.

This game is a typical example of last-round-game in opens, nervous, full of mistakes, fight til death.

The other type of last-round-games was produced by tired, worn-out players like Tosic, Abramovic, and Antic (all of them ex-champions) who made so-called "grandmasters' draws" in last round, not even trying to qualify.