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GM Keith
Arkell |
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It was a pleasure to return once again to the
splendid and spacious playing halls of
The Old Swan, Harrogate. After a few rounds,
while I was pacing the floor waiting for my
opponent to move, I took in the top dozen or so
boards and it was striking to observe that for
every IM/GM/experienced player, there was a tiny
child! These kids are becoming a formidable
force at ever younger ages, and it was not even
surprising that when the dust had settled, a 9
year old was one of the joint tournament
winners. I say it was no surprise because I had
already witnessed Supratit Banarjee, from
Scotland, draw with GM strength Ameet Ghasi in
round 1 of Hastings a few weeks earlier.
Sharing 1st place with Supratit were GM Peter
Wells, the strong and solid Paul Townsend, who
also tied for 1st place last year, and 15 year
old Lorenzo Fava. Dropping one draw too many to
be in this pack were the top 2 seeds, IM
Gediminas Sarakauskas and myself.
Apart from my failure to arrive in time for
round 1 at Bristol, last April, I've been
winning these British weekenders non-stop since
Hull, back in 2021, and here I had no regrets
because a draw with Black v Wells is fine and
both Lorenzo Fava and Piotro Denderski played at
a very high level - in fact with 98% and 97%
accuracy respectively.
Back to the star of the show, and here is the
game which brought Supratit Banarjee, 4 years
younger than Scotland's perhaps better known
prodigy, Frederick Gordon, into a share of 1st:
Download the above annotated PGN
31st 4NCL Congress:
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