Monday 3 August 2015

British Championship Update - Day Nine

Today was a rest day from all the main events of the tournament, and hence this will be a relatively short report. The only event with Kenilworth participation today was the blitz event, now officially retitled with British Blitz Championship. Sadly, the event was not a rousing success for any of the three of us playing in it with Mike, after a terrible start, scoring 3.5/11, Ben 4/11 and myself 5/11. I feel the whole squad is going to have to buck up its ideas if we are going to claw our way back to 50% overall by the end of the event, as we are now someway off the pace.

The only real bright spark of the whole event, for myself, is that I have pretty much guaranteed myself a win in the worst move in the tournament competition. In the final round, with my score on 50%, I blundered the exchange early in the game (causing Paul to walk away from my board in disgust), but then proceeded to outplay my opponent, reaching the position below. The first thing to notice is that c7+ wins instantly, as white will queen in at most a couple of moves. Points will be awarded to anyone who can work out which move I in fact played, which in my head was going to lead to the same result (spoiler alert, it did not, and it let to a completely lost endgame).


The other point of interest in the day was that Paul, Roy and myself (plus some others from the University chess club) attended a quiz in the evening, one of the side events organised alongside the championship. Despite our great disappointment at there not being a chess round (all that time spent learning Wilhelm Steinitz's mother's maiden name for nothing), we did manage to come equal first. You might think I would be pleased by that result, but how much better it could have been if people had listened to me when I told them that the Shakespeare play with a horse it in called White Surrey was Richard III. I mean really, who chooses to write down King Lear instead; the man spends the entire play walking around on foot as a beggar, that's the whole point. Anyway, I'm not bitter; I'm not bitter at all.

Summary thus far:
Total score by Kenilworth players: 45.5/101

My personal performance:
Played: 33
Wins: 14
Losses: 13
Draws: 6
Well played endgames: 9
Atrocious blunders: 8
Games won through opponent's illegal moves: 1

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