British Championship 2015 Day 7

 Good morning from Warwick! I am now on site, and feeling eerily familiar with student accommodation. But there are plenty of familiar faces, as well as lots of interesting chess. Strangely, it seems harder to follow things from the venue, but you can easily pick out what's grabbing everyone's attention. At the critical time, all eyes were of course on Howell-Pert. With white's time-trouble antics finally catching up with him, the tournament is wide open for the last four rounds - though today's pairings look critical.

 First though, I will get back to the puzzle I gave on Sunday morning - a surprisingly delicate endgame from Kalavannan-Okhai:

 I mentioned in my last post that it seemed as if the rest day was badly needed. Thankfully the balance seems to have been reversed, with lots of striking games and far fewer tactical disasters. Leading candidates for Game of the Day include black getting out-hacked in Burrows-Chevannes (another Interesting Caro-Kann!), white's sudden attack from a quiet Catalan in Willson-Waters, and more caveman play from the third seed in Hawkins-Hill. But from experience, I can say that the game really grabbing the spectators' attention was this wild encounter, that swung both ways before black finally breaks through:

 For today's tactical problem, it's a move 40 car crash:

S. Jones - J. McKenna - Black to move

 White has just played 40. Rc7+?? (40. Qxa7+ gave him an edge) which gives rise to a double question: what is black's best reply, and what happened next?

 And finally - the eagle-eyed may have noticed that I am playing in the British Championship today! I am playing as a filler, which should be an interesting experience. Hopefully I won't appear in my own series of tactical problems...