The 3rd of 7 consecutive wins

Update for Wednesday 26th July, as of 16:47. First I should apologise that these updates seem to focus only on my games - I seem to be the first person to finish each day so have no other results to report whilst I am writing. At least today Steph finished no longer after me (and also won) so it is looking like a positive day for Kenilworth might be in the offing.

The question arising from my game today is about queen sacrifices. My game featured a relatively pretty finish in the position below:

Now, obviously this (Qxg7, on the off chance anyone hasn't seen it) is a very unimpressive queen sacrifice. It is technically the best move (the only way to give mate in 2) but Bxg7 is mate in three, and many, many other things win (as you would expect, being a rook up with an attack). However, it did get me thinking that I'm not sure I've ever played a "necessary" queen sacrifice (that is, one where it is the only good move) and, given both how many games of chess I've played, and how much of my time I spend looking for fancy tactics, that does make me think they might be quite rare.

I feel I should also put in a special mention for Solomon's performance in the blitz event yesterday evening. After only scoring 2/9 in the first blitz event last week, he scored 5/9 this time, level with Bruce and only a point behind Jude (who, you will all be shocked to learn, was the top performing Kenilworth player). Given that Billy came second for Kenilworth, I think I might have had the no doubt entirely original thought that perhaps young people are quite good at fast chess.

The 2nd of 7 consecutive wins

Report for Tuesday 25th July, as of 16:27. Another win for my good self today, as per the title of this post. 8 moves before we were out of the Lichess "Masters database", and 9 before we were in an original game. Based on the comparison to the 8 moves from yesterday, I think that implies I know 12.5% more Latvian Gambit theory than I do Caro-Kann. I'm not sure what that says about me as a chess player, but I am sure they can only be good things

I have decided my new rule for this tournament is that if you beat a titled player you get your game published on this blog (actually, there is one extra criteria, which is that I need to notice the game, but let's pass over that swiftly). To that end, we have Ed's victory over WGM Sheila Jackson from yesterday. The full game is below, but the critical position to look at is after white's 21st move. White has sacrificed a piece, and there is one move here that completely wins for black (-5 according to the computer). See if you can find it (hint - it is not the move that Ed played in the game:

If anyone found Kh8, I think you are officially too good a player to be part of this club. For myself, even now I know that is the move, it is hard to convince myself it is the only move which is any good at all. Still, fortunately, after Ed's inaccuracy, his opponent swiftly went wrong again anyway, sacrificed another piece (even more unsoundly) and Ed was victorious.

Leicester question of the day - who is John Biggs? He has a sizeable statue in a fairly prominent place in the City Centre, but it contains absolutely no information as to why he merited such a monument. This presumably means that he is so well known it is unnecessary to provide any further details, but I'm fairly confident I have never heard of him:

The 1st of 7 consecutive wins

Report 2 from the British Championship in Leicester, as of 16:51 on Monday 24^th July. Does what it says on the tin really – a victory today, though many more needed for the tournament not to still end up as a disaster. I thought, to see how original (and no doubt sound) my play was, I would put the game into the opening database on Lichess, to say how long it took before we were out of known theory. The answer: after 4 of my moves (1. e4 c6 2. Nc3 d5 3. Qf3 Nf6 4.Bd3) we were out of the Lichess “Masters database” and after 8 moves it appears to be a game that has never been played before.

Second, we will have a quick look at the critical position below. Which move in this slightly strange structure wins for white basically at once?

 If you answered Nxd5, you are a better chess player than me. I played f5 gxf5 and only then Nxd5, which is a good deal fancier but sadly not as good a move. Still, one of the advantages of being at the bottom of the table is playing against people who are also out of form, so my opponent duly managed to misplay the position quite soon afterwards, and I was able to win. Not very impressive, but why waste your best chess at the start of a 7 game winning streak.

Since I finished early, I don’t have that much other news to report. Ben was in far too chipper a mood for someone who has played this many games of chess recently, Nigel gave what looked like a very convincing checkmate down the h file, and Solomon’s return to the area was marked by his opponent not bothering to turn up, meaning he had an even earlier finish than I did.

Leicester fact of the day – it has the largest Shopmobility and mobility aid shop in the UK. First review on Google for the establishment: “"The best day I have had in LEICESTER for 5 or more years now." I really hope that person hasn’t visited Leicester all that many times in the last 5 years, or it does not bode well for what I’m going to be able to find on the rest of my days there.

British championship report (part 1)

Since Mark did mention it in his message, I feel I should bring at least some news from the event. The number of posts you get is entirely dependent on the quality of the Wi-Fi on the Leicester-Nuneaton railway, so I’m guessing there won’t be all that many.

Kenilworth players update so far, as of 18:03 on Sunday 23^rd (assuming Marks original list is correct):

• Ben: 8.5/21
• Billy: 7/12
• Dhairya: 4/9
• Jude: 0/1
• Joshua: 0/2 (but will be 7/9 obviously)
• Nigel: 2/5
• Keatan: 0/0
• Bruce: 0/0
• George: 0/0
• Steph: 0/0
• David: 3/5
• Ed: 0/0
• Rhys: 3.5/7
• Lionel: 4/7

That makes a grand total of 32/69 so far, for 46.4% (assuming you can trust my train mathematics). Some room for improvement there I would say.

I can tell you very little about the quality of the games outside of my own, as the event is being played across a number of different rooms, and my tournament appears to have been shoved into a corner all by itself, so I basically can’t see any of the other tournaments that are going on. On day 1 the doors were all closed so you couldn’t easily access the other rooms, and on day 2 as I went to look in the other rooms a Kenilworth player (who to maintain some anonymity I will call by a pseudonym of Mark P Horseman) informed me that I shouldn’t be in the room with the good championship players, and sent me back off to my corner again. Hopefully once more events start on Monday I won’t feel quite so alone.

I can tell you very succinctly about the quality of the games that I have played – poor to abysmal. Two well deserved defeats to players rated lower than, but clearly much better than, myself, so we will have to cope that 7/9 will be enough to quality me for the big boys room next year (as obviously I’m definitely going to win my next 7 games, given this start). I think it might be time for a King’s gambit tomorrow – it really is that bad.

The event is being played at de Montford University, which those of you who had an extremely eccentric choice of subject matter at GCSE history will know, is named after Simon de Montford, who was basically the Oliver Cromwell equivalent in what really should be called the first English Civil War, but seems to have been inexplicably expunged from most accounts of British history.

With that in mind, I was aiming to come up with some metaphor related to that time about a Kenilworth nobleman coming to conquer Leicester. Unfortunately, the Earl of Warwick (about the closest person of any consequence) appears to have been comprehensively defeated by de Montford, and Warwick Castle captured, so perhaps the quality of my play is historically accurate after all. If anyone with better historical knowledge than me can come up with a more positive link, please do let me know and I shall steal it for future messages.

I think we can all agree these reports need something more upmarket that Mark’s usual popular songs, so instead I bring you the museum of the day from my cultural trip around Leicester. Official KCC museum review – average (but much better than the chess so far, from my perspective):

Good Luck in Leicester!

By my admittedly dodgy reckoning, over the coming week and a bit 14 KCC members are due to play in  the 2023 British Championships in Leicester. In fact, much to my surprise, the event already kicked off last night with the first rapidplay events, in which KCC had two representatives. Ben was first on the scoreboard with a first round win, but by the end Dhairya had overtaken him to finish on 4/9, with Ben close behind on 3.5 and both our guys gaining rating points.

More action is underway as I write this (Friday afternoon), with the first of 3 Rapidplay events. In the Open section, Ben is again in action, joined this time by Billy, while Rhys and Lionel are in the U1750. This section witnessed the first KCC v KCC battle with an honours even first round draw.

Jude is headlining our challenge, playing in the British Championship proper, where he finds himself seeded 47th. There may only be 5 GMs this year, but its still rather strong! Unless there are some late additions to, or defections from, the entries, t looks like he will be playing one of the Kanyamarala siblings from Ireland in Round 1 - who have identical ratings at 2344. But then again, he may play someone else entirely, as my understanding of swiss-system pairings is rather sketchy! Other participants in Championship events are Bruce B in the 50+ seniors; Ed in the 65+ seniors; Keatan in the U16; and Dhairya in the U12. Other KCC members in action are Joshua, Steph, George, Nigel and (the soon to be returning, we hope!) David.

Now, I have just checked back to a post on this Blog made by Joshua on August 8th 2015 (some of us have long memories!) where he summarised the performance of the KCC players the last time the British Championships were held in the Midlands - though Warwick University was much more convenient than De Montfort University is. There, KCC players managed a total of 121 games, scoring 56.5 pts (46.7%). We performed better in standardplay games, where we scored 28.5/55 - 51.8%. Sadly he does not list all the KCC participants, but I at least recall that Paul and I played in the Championship (and Andrew P who signed up for KCC during that very tournament), Bernard C and Mike in the Seniors, and Josh in the Major Open and just about every other tournament he could - some 43 games in total!  Well, I can report that both cumulative and individual totals will be beaten over the next week!

• Ben - 44 games (6 events)
• Billy - 37 games (5 events)
• Dhairya - 23 games ( events)
• Jude - 18 games (2 events)
• Joshua - 18 games (2 events) - not a very spirited defence of his title!
• Nigel - 17 games (3 events)
• Keatan - 16 games (2 events)
• Bruce B - 16 games (2 events)
• George - 16 games (2 events)
• Steph - 12 games (2 events)
• David - 12 games (2 events)
• Ed - 7 games (1 event)
• Rhys - 7 games (1 event)
• Lionel - 7 games (1 event)

(Apologies if I've missed anyone out, or missed an event here or there. I'm not perfect, you know!)

I almost added in our lock-down on-line member Solomon, who could have contributed another 30 games and 4 events to our total, but even I could see this would be pushing things a bit far!

Interestingly, in  our total of 250 games, the KCC participants will be playing considerably more speed chess than standardplay games:-

• Standard - 90 games
• Rapid - 90 games
• Blitz - 70 games

So whereas standardplay games accounted for 45.5% of the KCC activity in 2015, in 2023 it will be only 36%.  A sign of our younger demographic, I suspect!

And as I finish up, I see that Billy has just beaten the 2097 rated Stephen Ledger (brother of IM Andrew) in Rd 4 of the 1st Rapidplay Open and in Round 5 finds himself on Board 4 with 3/4! Lets hope for many more ratings upsets like these in the next 10 days!

Good luck to all KCC members playing in Leicester, and I look forward to seeing most of you at one time or another during my 3 planned spectating visits. 

BTW - In 2015, Joshua set himself the task of posting a report on each day of the event, a feat he repeated (nearly!) in Torquay in 2019. Given he will be spending hours everyday travelling on and waiting for trains (strike days excepted, I guess), I'm hoping he will be doing the same again to keep us all up to date with the action.

From the Archives - Part 17 - Odds and Sods

Well, even by my standards there has been a rather long interval since Part 16 of this KCC history. 27 months, in fact, for which I would like to apologise. Though I doubt that anyone has been waiting on tenterhooks for a resumption of this narrative.  If you can remember back as far as the last instalment, you will recall that the series of articles had initially finished with Part 15, which covered the events of 2006. But then Mike Johnson suddenly came forward with a new heap of papers which enabled me to fill in some of the gaps in the records I had previously inherited. So Part 16 backtracked to cover the years 2000 and 2001, and now Part 17 takes us on to 2003-05

May 2003 - The 2003 AGM was actually well covered in Part 12 of this series (19.09.19) but now the accounts have come to hand. Income from membership subs (£10 adults; £5 associates; £4 juniors) amounted to £230, which was quite a tidy sum back then, while expenditure was only some £136 pounds, giving us a surplus on the year of £94.68. This took our accumulated funds to £284.79, which put is in a good position to cope with unforeseen events such as a pandemic; energy and fuel inflation; or Brexit. Clearly the Club was in very far-sighted hands in those days. I'm not sure why, but our LDCL League Membership fees were a whopping £102, whereas now - even with 5 teams next season - we will only be paying £57. Almost certainly this was tied up with extra payments to the ECF (though it may have still been the BCF then) which have now been subsumed within the individual ECF membership fee.

August 2003 - A letter from the Secretary (Bernard) dated August 14 informs the members that a Team Formation meeting will be held at the Sports and Social Club on August 28th. Additionally, the club will be presented that night with the BCF Small Club of the Year award. Bernard also takes the opportunity to announce that the Club internal tournaments have finally been resolved, with victories for Adam Sykes (over Bernard) in the Tilley Cup and for Carl Pickering (over Rod Webb) in the Plate. And we learn that summer attendances have been "excellent - at least 8 on most nights".

20 people turn out for the Team Formation/BCF Award night, though disappointingly the Club Secretary is a notable absentee. But at least he apologises for his absence. As does - oh no! - the BCF representative due to make the Club of the Year presentation. What a disappointment. This will have to be rescheduled. (David Anderton did subsequently attend a club night before Christmas to make this award.) But at least our teams are sorted out:-

A team - Paul L, Bernard, Paul Mills and Carl (captain)

B team - Phil, Mark L, Adam Sykes, Rod (captain) and Tom Swallow as reserve

C team - Roy, Nick Mottram and Nigel Morris (captain)

D team - Chris, Geoff King, Tony King, Mike Whatson (captain) and Simon Whatson as reserve

E team - Tom Payne, Aaron Payne, Steve Payne, Bruce Holland and Frank Holmes (captain)

May 2004 - Another AGM that has been extensively reported already (Part 13 - 11.10.19), but - once again - the Accounts have now come to light. These show income down by about £40 and expenditure up by a similar amount, so the annual surplus was a measly £15.91. This was mainly due to a steep rise in LDCL fees to £136. Still, our accumulated balance continues to grow and now stands at £300.70.

March 2005 -  An interesting letter from Bernard (as Secretary) dated March 31, giving notice of the forthcoming AGM. No, that's not the interesting bit, this is. He informs us, firstly, that the Club will host the U-125 Cup Final between Nuneaton and Stratford on April 21, and then issues an appeal for members to volunteer to serve on the LDCL Committee. "At present, only 4 clubs are represented on the Committee being Stratford, Banbury, Olton and Solihull. As the largest club within the League, the Committee has requested that Kenilworth have at least one representative and I really think that we should honour this commitment." Wow! Who knew we were ever the largest club within the League?? This is complete news to me, and a major surprise, considering we are the smallest community to have a team in the League!

May 2005 - A club membership list comes to light. We have an impressive 20 full members; 1 associate and 5 juniors. Plus 3 naughty people (Adam Sykes; Aaron Payne and Simon Whatson) who didn't cough up their subs! The full members are:- Bruce Holland; Chris Aldridge; Nick Mottram; Phil Wood; Rod Webb; Roy Watson; Mike Whatson; Tom Swallow; Tony King; Bernard Rogers; Geoff King; Nigel Morris;Frank Holmes; Steve Payne; Paul Mills; Carl Pickering; Nick Waterman; Len Krombeen, Calvin Smith; and the mysterious Dr ??????, who gave his £10 to Carl! john skinner was the only associate member and our junior squad was Paul and Mark Lam; Tom Payne; Michael Atkins and Daniel Parvis.

I know I am starting to sound like a record that has got stuck, but the 2005 AGM has also previously been recorded at length (Part 14 - 18.12.19) though again without any financial details. Until now! These show another rise in LDCL fees, which have now reached the stratosphere - £168! Luckily, the Treasurer must have applied the thumbscrews as he has somehow raked in £225 in subs, but with £62.88 spent on equipment, and £40 of subsidies for our juniors' BCF membership, we posted a loss on the year of £34.65, which reduced our accumulated funds to £266.05.

I think I'll call it a day for now - if you think its a pain reading this stuff, spare a thought for me having to type it all out! There's enough material left over for at least one more instalment of this series, so the suffering - for all of us - is not over yet. There will be a Part 18 of this series - don't think it won't happen, just because it hasn't happened yet. Which just happens to be a line from our latest song!

Way Back When

Those of you with exceptional recall might remember that we once had a post on this website which included the "Game on the T-Shirt" (see Bobby Fischer: a Personal Pilgrimage - Part 3, The Museum, April 6, 2018). Finally, we have a sequel, with the" Game on the Photo".

I was rather shocked the other day when Paul sent me the photo which appears below. He had discovered this quite by chance while browsing through an old edition of Chess magazine from December, 2013 - well, we all find ourselves at a loose end every now and then, I suppose. Anyway, here I am, from a long time ago, in glorious technicolour.

My opponent absents himself from the board and unfortunately misses his chance to appear on the KCC website 42 years later!

This naturally got me rather intrigued about what happened in the game - I had absolutely no memory of the match of course - but you'll have guessed from the fact that I am even writing this stuff that I won. Its not an entirely sound affair (surprise, surprise) but its way more inventive and dynamic than I can manage these days. I can't imagine I've sacrificed two exchanges in a single game before or since!

I thought that my old club used to be rather strong, but with me on Board 4 there must have been a few players unavailable that night!

Silverware!

Well, this is a sight for sore eyes. 6 of the 7 trophies won by KCC teams and individuals during the 2022-23 Leamington League and Coventry League seasons. The missing trophy is the Division 3 shield, which is still sitting on someone's mantelpiece in Banbury, the 2021-22 winners having regrettably failed to return it for engraving and prizegiving.

Back row (l-r): Coventry League Div 1 and Leamington League Div 1 trophies
Front row (l-r): (All Leamington League) Individual Blitz (Javier); U-1600 Cup; Stanley Gibbins Trophy (me!) and Open KO Cup

All these successes have been well documented on this Blog, except for the Stanley Gibbins trophy (presented by, and named in honour of, the League (and the original Kenilworth Chess and Draughts Club!) founder), which is awarded annually to the individual making the highest percentage score in the Leamington League. In winning this, with a score of 11.5/13 (88.5%) I became the third Kenilworth player to hold the trophy, following in the footsteps of Joshua Pink (2014 - 13/14 (92.9%)) and Andrew Paterson (2022 - 9/10 (90%)) - though as the figures show, I am clearly the least deserving of the three! Coming second this year was former KCC stalwart Mike Johnson, who scored 9.5/12 (79.2%) in Division 4 playing for Coventry. Luckily for me, none of the League's 100 per centers played enough games (10, I think) to be eligible!

The distribution of trophies to their various guardians for the next 12 months has already begun, and at least one of them has been celebrated in style!

Keatan and the U-1600 Cup!