   Games: Chess  There are two British players among the last
eight survivors of the world championship in Groningen in the
Netherlands. After a hair-raising day of play-off matches, both
Nigel Short and Michael Adams held their nerve to win through to
the next round.  The line-up for the quarter-final matches is as
follows:  Boris Gelfand - Alexander Dreyev  Mikhail Krasenkov -
Nigel Short  Viswanathan Anand - Alexei Shirov  Loek van Wely -
Michael Adams  The match between Short and Belyavsky was decided
in the play-off games at a rate of 25 minutes for each player,
after they had each won one game at normal time limits. In the
first game of the play-off match, Short played an excellent
strategic game. In such Queen's Gambit positions, when Black
finds himself with an isolated d-pawn, advances it to d4, and is
sidestepped by the white pawn moving to e4, it is easy for the
black pawn at d4 to become a weakness in the endgame. Short gave
a beautiful demonstration of how to turn it into a strength. His
idea of