British Championship 2016 - Day 9

And so the Adams train rolls on. Though I only saw it in bits and pieces, his win against Jones seemed remarkably easy. However, Howell is only a point behind with two rounds to go, so it's not over yet. Eggleston aside, there are no norms secured yet as far as I know, but that could change today.

Most of today's post, more by accident than design, looks back at 24 hours in the life of Matthew Payne. Yesterday I left you with this unfortunate accident from his game against Marcus Harvey:

But he made up for it with this spectacular win against Pavel Asenov (A nod too, by the way, to Taylor-Starley, an interesting sort of reversed Blumenfeld Gambit.) Unfortunately the attack isn't quite sound (25... Bf5 is the prosaic way to win, whereas 28. Rg1 would have beaten off the sacrificial onslaught) but it was too much to figure out over the board, and ended in a curious echo of the previous round:

Today's puzzle is a big change of pace though - we're going deep into the rook ending that came up in Hackner-Pleasants.

O. Hackner - A. Pleasants - White to Play

I give this more for its educational value than in the serious expectation that Hackner should have been able to figure out the narrow path to a White win. Nevertheless, it is (just) possible to bring the point home - how?