Marin explains that in chessbase:

<65...g5+!? A desperate move, aiming to deprive the enemy king of the g5-square. It must be said that other moves would not have saved either, for instance 65...Rd5 (The only available square along the 5th rank) 66.Ne5+ Kf8 (The knight ending arising after 66...Ke6 67.Rb6+ Rd6 68.Rxd6+ Kxd6 69.Kg5 is hopless, too.) 67.Rb6 Kg7 68.Kg5 and Black's position will collaps soon. Abandoning the fifth rank with 65...Ra1 allows a similar course of events with 66.Ne5+ Kf6 67.Rb6+ Kg7 68.Kg5.>

Since White can improve the position of his king after 61...g5 and force the trade of the rooks, Eljanov was probably quite hesitant to lock the pawns. At the end he played the g5 anyway, but at a less opportune time.

I think the <pawns fall like ripe apples> cliche should be retired. (a) I am sick of it (b) I don't think apples fall until they are rotten. Happily, I have little experience in harvesting produce, but Robert Frost seems to think picking apples is hard work.

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.

And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

Autumn:

Ripe apples are falling

new rule, you can't retire a cliche without suggesting a new one.

I grew up with a small orchard. you're right, pawns technically don't "fall" when ripe, but they are so easy to pick that it feels like they are falling into your hand. Unripe apples require two hands to pluck or you will grab the bud as well, which will definitely get your butt kicked out of shams' tiny orchard.

"pawns fall like subprime mortgage futures". I like that. Mig would approve.

you should read, if you've not already, Hendrik Hertzberg's "Comment" from the Dec. 10 New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comme...) from which I can't help liberally quoting:

"Regime change was one of the stated goals of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Unlike cleansing the place of weapons of mass destruction and breaking up the alleged Baghdad-Al Qaeda nexus, it was a reality-based goal; and, unlike the other two (which were as unattainable and unnecessary as ridding the moon of green cheese), it was actually accomplished. Saddam Hussein’s regime has indeed been changed—though what it has been changed into, of course, is not quite what was intended.

And regime change, it turns out, is infectious—a militarily transmittable disease, almost invariably fatal, so far, to any political party or head of government so careless of hygiene as to have had intimate relations with the Bush Administration’s Mesopotamian misadventure. The contagion set in less than a year into the war, when, three days after the Madrid terrorist bombings of March 11, 2004, <Spain>’s conservative government, which had sent thirteen hundred soldiers to Iraq, was defeated at the polls. The soldiers were out within three months. In May of 2005, it was the turn of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, of <Italy>, President Bush’s loudest West European supporter, who had sent three thousand troops; his successor, Romano Prodi, brought them home. In June of this year, Tony Blair was finally obliged to relinquish his grip on <Britain>’s Labour government, largely because of Iraq; the new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has signalled that he intends to withdraw Britain’s troops—some five thousand of the original commitment of forty-five thousand remain—by the end of 2008. Six weeks ago, <Poland>’s premier, the twin brother of the country’s President, lost to an opponent whose platform included bringing back the nine hundred Polish troops that are still in Iraq. Other countries whose voters have dispensed with the services of leaders who enrolled them in Bush’s “coalition of the willing” include <Hungary, Ukraine, Norway, and Slovakia>.

>>MarkThornton: Can anyone see why Elianov defended with <65...g5+>. It looks like suicide to me. I presume he saw other lines that he liked even less. But I can't see them.

Mueller and Lamprecht say N+2 vs N+1 is drawn unless the attacker has special advantages. However, they give two endgames with rook pawns involved, which are presumably more drawish (because the K+P endings will be drawn) and one which closely ressembles this game, where Karpov held:

Kasparov vs Karpov, 1984

click for larger view