Division 1(a), Weekend 3, Holiday Inn, Birmingham,
13-14 Feb 2016
by John Carleton
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Holiday Inn, Birmingham Airport |
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Just three short weeks after
rounds 3 and 4 the teams in divisions 1 and 2 of
the 4NCL descended on Birmingham for rounds 5
and 6. It would have been easy to become
dispirited after two big reversals of the
previous rounds but inspired by the
grubmeister's selected Homeric poetry we
resolved to be competitive over the whole
weekend. In our round 5 game against Oxford 1
our resolution took a quick dent when we
suffered two early losses. Nick Ivell on board 3
had prepared an improvement over one of opponent
Marcus Harvey's previous games. However Marcus
got his improvement in first and when Nick was
unable to find some "only moves" defeat followed
for our player.
On board 8, against
Francesca Matta, Dave Robertson blundered
his queen away as the game was just moving
out of the opening phase and resignation was
immediate. The other games did seem to
justify optimism [to this admittedly biased
observer at least] and on balance to be
somewhat in our favour. Brett Lund on board
1 seemed to be gradually squeezing the life
from Oxford's Justin Tan's position but,
short of time, Brett allowed his opponent to
slip out of trouble with the aid of a
desperate exchange sacrifice: draw. Board 2
saw Gary Quillan garner a couple of pawns at
the cost of development problems.
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Spirit of
Atticus A (Round 5, 13 February) |
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John Carleton |
Our silicon friends
like Gary's prospects early on but we were
all sure that enormous pressure would follow
from David Zakarian and it did! and the
Oxford player finished with aplomb: loss.
My game on board 4 with William
Claridge-Hansen was the least volatile of the
match, peace agreed around the time control with
a level queen ending on the board: draw. Sheila
Jackson against Tim Dickinson on board 6 looked
to be falling behind in a game of attacks on
opposite sides of the board but gradually the
initiative and central control swung her way and
decisive inroads were made: win. On board 5
Glenn was gradually getting a large positional
edge when he left the back door open and
Hans-Peter Hansen headed for Glenn's king using
some long range geometry to gain a decisive
material advantage: loss.
Martin Mitchell
playing Michael Handley on board 6 went for
activity over structure and in due course his
enterprise was rewarded by entering a rook and
pawn ending a pawn up which advantage quickly
stretched by a further pawn: win. Final score: 3-5.
With the match complete we
headed to the restaurant enjoyed our food, drink
and the company putting aside thoughts of what
might have been and where chess appeared we
concentrated on the morrow. On our arrival back
in the hotel at the bar it was realised, under
the patient guidance of our esteemed
controllers, that our meal-time in-depth
discussion of the team order required a hurried
re-vamping because the skipper had not
appreciated all the nuances of the January FIDE
grade changes. Once the correction was
accomplished we mingled with the chess throng
some of whom seemed quite thirsty.
Among those who conversed with
us was Paul Townsend, captain of White Rose 1,
who astutely observed that in our pool six teams
had reasonable aspirations of attaining one of
the four slots in the championship pool. This was
true and also a very nice way of identifying the
other two teams who were each pointless going
into round 6 and playing each other in that
round. The two teams were, of course, ourselves
and White Rose 2.
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Round 6, Spirit of Atticus A v White
Rose 2. |
Photo © John
Saunders |
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And so, Sunday brought the
battle of the basement with each team determined
to make their mark on the competition. There was
one early result; Sheila was content to simplify
with the black pieces against strong junior
player Harry Li and content to take the draw in
the resulting flat ending. Thereafter bellicose
intentions ruled and interesting positions arose
throughout. On board 1 Martin Brown, buoyed from
pressing GM Glenn Flear in a rook and pawn
ending the day before, played an anti-Sicilian
space grab and manoeuvred behind his pawn front
challenging Nick to break out.
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Spirit of
Atticus A (Round 6, 14
February) |
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My game against Jim Burnett
saw me building up pressure around his king
and breaking things up with a
pseudo-sacrifice which seemed sure to win in
the long run. Brett on board 3 was swiftly
building up one of his dream
counter-attacking positions after repulsing
Peter Gayson's early strike for the
initiative.
Gary on board 4 switched around
his isolated QP, improving his piece placement
and putting Svetlana Sucikova's kingside
defences under the microscope. Glenn played
calmly on the black side of an interesting c3
Sicilian variation and when Jonathan Arnott
ambitiously advanced on the king's wing, only
Glenn seemed to have winning chances. Martin,
with the white pieces, chipped away at Peter
Shaw's Stonewall defence and picked up an
important pawn on board 6.
On Board 8 Dave met Kieran
O'driscoll's Scandinavian in an unorthodox
manner but had trouble finding safety for his
king. A flurry of activity around the 4 hour
mark saw us reach our main target of four and a
half points. Decisive results just flowed in:
Brett on board 3 duly completed victory by
strangling the remaining life out of his
opponent's position. Glenn finished his game on
board 5 in style forcing mate as did Gary on
board 4. Martin on board 6 showed that his pawn
gain had not been the most important feature of
the position and he actually mated his opponent
through the wide open kingside. Martin Brown
picked up a point for White Rose when he
finished his game nicely showing Nick's
counterplay to have been illusory, the players
treating us to a nice time scramble to boot.
Thereafter Dave on board 8 gave
up his unequal struggle in the ending into which
he had been forced to bale out. This left me in
play, and having mishandled my time throughout I
stumbled from easy win to level to lost and
suffered for quite a while doing it. Only by
luck did my situation brighten up when Jim began
to become wary of having also slipped into what
he regarded as an uncomfortable time situation
and offered me a draw, almost parting company
with his hand as I signalled my agreement after
over six hours play. Final score: 5-3. Thus we
finally got off the mark and have plenty of
positives to take from the weekend. As ever we
look, with our customary optimism, to a future
with further close encounters, notably in the
demotion pool.
Division 1a
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