Where to begin ? I suppose at the start of last week would be best as junior member James Ratcliffe set off down south to play in the Isle of Wight “Masters” to compete in a field of over 110 comprising 46 titled players (9 GMs, 12 IMs, 14 FMs, 9 CMs, 1 WGM and 1 WIM). James was ranked No 94 in this star studded event and got off to a wonderful start with a draw in Rd 1. Unbelievably after 5 rounds, James was on a plus score with 3/5 against average FIDE ratings of 2125 (compared to his own 1873 FIDE rating). After this, the results unsurprisingly fell off with one draw from the last 4 games to finish on a creditable 3.5/9, and a tourney rating of 2023. All in all a brilliant effort – well done James.
The other events taking place were a weekend congress in Doncaster where we had three of our members in action – Carmel (Open), Simon (U2000) and Nigel (U1600). Nigel got closest to the prize winners list – see his story below ……. “The Secret Diary of Nigel Gardner, Aged 64 3/4”
More locally we had four players at the Leyland Rapidplay on Sunday. These were Dave P, Dougie, Harry & Mal. Harry came 2nd in the open, starting as 6th seed out of 10, finishing behind the No. 1 seed on 4.5/6. Mal also performed extremely well to finish joint 3rd in the Minor, also with a score of 4.5/6. The Chess Results server provides details of all the tournament results …. that is if you can find them … as I can’t trace Dave & Doug’s results !!
If you have a spare hour, read on …. Nigel’s entertaining story …
The Secret diary of Nigel Gardner, Aged 64¾………..
The questions I ask myself this morning is
- Whether CHESS is acronymical?
- If so, what does it stand for in my case?
- Is there a word acronymical? (having checked there is!)
The catalyst for these musings are my experiences at the Doncaster Chess Congress this weekend. (Before I proceed with my trail of tribulation, I can strongly recommend this congress for the future. It’s well run, at a spacious, modern and clean venue. Its cheap to enter, with a strong prize fund and a good standard of diverse entrants. Its location is great with loads of reasonably priced, modern accommodation nearby.) End of advert!
Day -1 On Thursday evening, I spontaneously decide to enter the Congress on a whim taking a bye for round one with the intention of travelling there and back on Saturday and to return on the Sunday if things were going ok. I sought permission from my supervisor and the deed was done with £30 paid.
Day 0 After some impulsive research I find a Travelodge about a mile from the venue, looks new and is reasonably priced so I book in for the Saturday night. I then have the novel experience (because of my ½ point Friday night bye) of watching an event unfold, of which I am a part, from the distance of a hundred miles or so. I finish in 22nd place from 59 entrants; quite good considering I’d been watching the Winter Olympics all evening!
Day 1 An early start, a 2-hour drive and I arrive in good time to suss out the venue and my accommodation; both of which are very pleasantly surprising. Its all set around an enormous manmade lake and parking is easily accessible. I’d looked at the draw for the 2nd round to find that, weirdly, my opponent was the only other Gardner in the whole tournament. The game was long and interesting but whilst our names were the same our styles, and in particular, playing speeds, were polar opposites. As a result, I lost a minor piece for a pawn, got massively out of position but did manage to generate about 3 past pawns. However, he too had one; so, the position to mere non-engine like myself was in flux. I felt that I would probably, gradually, fade away. So, I decided to make it complicated, and upped my move speed from Rapidplay to hyperbullet. This really unsettled him so he offered a draw which after a short consideration I accepted. Afterwards, he cited one of his reasons for the draw offer, was time concerns…………………. he only had 29 minutes left!!!!!!!!!!!
I move down to 28th place
Round 3 in the afternoon brought a completely different opponent but fortunately during the lunch break I’d found my can of Whoopass and after a very dynamic and fast-moving game I had a win in just over an hour with a couple of imaginative move combinations that left my opponent bewildered but polished my ego immensely! Up to 15th with 2 points from 3 and I’ve had 2 interesting but wildly different games of chess.
Day 2 A day that will stay in my memory, probably for the rest of my life! Firstly, my round 4 opponent in the morning was unlike any other I had ever had for reasons I can’t go into. He caused me to think long and hard about life and how unfair it can be. He was a really nice guy, played really well, but liked to take a lot of time over every move. I went a pawn down after a stupid blunder in the first 6 moves. Worse than that was that to only restrict it to a pawn loss I had ended up with a horrible position. However, nil desperandum. I played on and we reached an end game with a rook each but his pawn advantage was now starting to overwhelm me. So, I decided to get creative again and go into full on attack mode. Part of this included giving up another2 pawns but then engineering a 3-pawn standoff giving me a passed pawn. With care he could nullify this but remember he liked to take his time; boy, did this eat into his clock. The time pressure was telling and then I invoked neat little trap that he walked right into. I moved my king away from a pawn it was protecting he greedily gobbled it up with his rook without taking any time. The coup de gras: my king had moved opposite his king on the side of the board and my rook mated him. From the depths of despair came glory! He appreciated the funny side of it and we both moved on. That was the morning; Up to 6th.
The afternoon’s game was the antithesis of the morning’s and is the spur for me writing this as a form of cathartic release. My opponent was young and moved quicker than I did. In fact, we both got through over 80 moves in about an hour!!!!!!!! He was lower rated but won’t be for long. I was tired and decided if I played the long, obvious game I would probably make a mistake. Cue a bishop sac for 2 pawns. It certainly opened things up. We were moving so quickly I occasionally forgot to record moves and then tried to catch up. It all became very frantic and frenetic; but still very interesting and extremely challenging. Then after about 60 moves he blundered a knight for a pawn and I had the advantage of one pawn. Gradually, my king advanced up the board forcing his back but both of us had lots of nasty little traps that we were trying to spring. Eventually I forced his king onto the back rank with my pawn and rook about to either mate him and/or promote to a queen and then it happened …….. possibly the most stupid thing anyone has ever done on a chess board. He took my pawn which was (protected by my king) with his rook giving up his rook and the match. However, in the febrile cocoon in which we were playing my brain was momentarily disengaged and I read it that if I took the rook, it was stalemate. Without taking 30 seconds to consider (although I had over an hour on the clock) I said to him that it was now a draw and we shook hands.
Then reality dawned and my world imploded. I’d played about 250 moves over the 2 days and really enjoyed the peaks and troughs; unfortunately, that last decision took me to the bottom of the Marianas Trench! The win I’d earned would have left me in joint 3rd with an insignificant amount of prize money; the official result of a draw leaves me in about 5th place and plenty of memories, plenty of regrets and one BIG lesson learned…………he answer to question 2 posed at the start of this is, in my case………..
Can’t Help Emotionally Spontaneous Stupidity
(hopefully putting my thoughts down on paper has helped to expunge the anguish I felt and has saved me the cost of extensive psychotherapy for the next few years)
