Thursday 23 July 2015

British Chess Championship - Preview

We are now barely a couple of weeks away from the exciting date when Mark Page and Paul Lam are declared joint British Champion, after an unfortunate mass poisoning at the dinner after the penultimate round leads to the withdraw of much of the rest of the field. As such, I thought it time to take stock of the Kenilworth players who will be participating in events this year. As it currently stands, we have:

Mark Page – Main Championship
Paul Lam – Main Championship
Mike Donnelly – Over 65s
Ben Graff – U150 and rapidplay
Bernard Charnley – Over 65s
Joshua Pink – Various (got to maximise my change of winning at least one game)
Rajen Parekh - U15

Some other people with a previous association with the club playing include:

Ed Goodwin – Over 65s and U160
Clive Blackburn – U125

We also have three members of the Coventry Chess Academy (run by our own Paul Lam) playing, one U11, one U9 and two in the U8s.

For people not playing, there is live commentary from IM Andrew Martin available on the championship website (http://www.britishchesschampionships.co.uk/2015/), and you can also go to the venue at Warwick University and watch the commentary live. I will be trying to update the blog fairly regularly with how we are getting on, but this obviously depends on how depressed I am with my own performance.

Finally, for people playing, I will be accepting game nominations in any of the following categories:

1) Best game played by a Kenilworth player
2) Worst game played by a Kenilworth player (in there just so I’ll win something)
3) Biggest upset achieved by a Kenilworth player
4) Worst move played by a Kenilworth player

The winners will be adjudicated by the strongest available judge associated with the club – the copy of HIARCS on my laptop. If anyone has ideas for other categories that should be added to the list let me know. The winner of each will be given a prize of one free game of playing the French Defence without me moaning about their choice.

Not long now until we find out, once and for all, just how bad we really are.

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