THE results from the third and fourth rounds of the 2005 Bermuda Closed Championship were as follows:

Round Three

Bobby Miller 0-1 Nick Faulks

Zuzana Kovacova v Sami Lill ( to be played )

Phil Shadick 0-1 Ezra Turner

Round Four

Ezra Turner 0-1 Zuzana Kovacova

Phil Shadick 1-0 Bobby Miller

Sami Lill 0-1 Nick Faulks

This leaves Faulks in the lead with three and a half points, which could be matched by Kovacova if she wins her delayed game. I shall give a full table next week, when the tournament will have reached its half-way point.

Another event featuring the same format is now starting in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia. Six of the world’s best and most exciting players will be there for two weeks, playing two games against each opponent.

It is assumed that the main sponsors, the local communications company Mobitel (who planned this event to celebrate their tenth anniversary) have put up a substantial prize fund, but sadly the web site gives no clues about that.

One novel feature is that the players will not be permitted to communicate with each other during the games, which means that direct draw offers, considered by some to be killing the modern game, will be impossible.

Just how dead drawn games will be brought to a close is not quite clear, but it seems that the players may be able to petition the arbiter for “permission to draw”.

There seems to be no need to experiment with this feature in Bermuda, since at the time of writing only one of the 13 completed games in our championship has ended in a draw.

However, I think Phil Shadick, who has scored two wins and two losses, might have significantly increased this proportion. I have already shown in this column the game against your correspondent, which he had to resign only one move after missing a drawing continuation.

Having looked at the record of his next game, in which he took the white pieces against Ezra Turner, I think something similar may have happened there.

The diagram shows the position after Black’s 50th move — I do not have the clock readings, but one or both players may well have been short of time.

Black is clearly striving for the full point, based on his dangerous c2 pawn, but remember that the pawnless ending of K+R+N v K+R cannot be won against good defence, so White needs only to eliminate his opponent’s pawns without losing his own rook to reach a theoretical draw. His own kingside pawns should prove a useful decoy.

The game ended abruptly with 51.h7?, Kd6 52.Rg7, Ne5 and White resigned since he cannot prevent the knight from reaching d3 with check and a quick mate.

A better plan was 51.Re6+, Kb5 52.Rd6, which looks like a draw, but I really like 51.e5, after which Black appears to have no plausible winning idea at all.

I would strongly recommend that anyone who is interested in understanding such endings should set up the position and try out a few lines.