As part of its summer programme, Hebden Bridge Chess Club ran a fixed opening tournament on Monday evening at the Trades Club, Holme Street. This time the 16 players taking part had to begin every game with the Spanish Opening, or Ruy Lopez, in 5 rounds of 15-minute-a-side-games.
The clear winner was Darwin Ursal, a guest from Halifax Chess Club, with a maximum score of 5/5, with Hebden Bridge’s Nick Sykes close behind on 4/5.
The surprise statistic of the evening was that, of the decisive results, there were 22 wins for Black and only 13 for White. This was a bit of a puzzle, as the Spanish is considered to be one of White’s strongest openings, and one in which White’s first move initiative last the longest.
The answer maybe, as Nick Sykes suggested, that very few of the players present employ the opening regularly as White, but many more must be familiar with some way of countering it as Black, so they were better prepared to meet the line than to play it themselves.
On the previous Saturday, Yorkshire Chess Association hosted the Northern Regional Girl’s Chess Championships, in which one of Hebden Bridge’s young players, 10-year-old Robina Murray, distinguished herself by coming second in the under-12’s section. She now goes on to the national finals in London in July, and the club wishes her the best of luck and steady nerves.
I’ll finish this post off by publishing the remainder of the activities planned at the club over the summer recess:
June 13th – Summer Knockout Competitions
June 20th – Analysis Evening with Matthew Parsons
June 27th – Summer Knockout Competitions
July 4th – How good is your chess?
July 11th – Club AGM
July 18th – Opening Surprise tournament
July 25th – Summer Knockout Competitions
August 1st – Analysis Evening with Pete Leonard
5 comments:
great too see the juniors doing well. lets hope they keep playing once they leave primary school, due to the traditional abysmal support secondary schools offer in England.
I couldn't agree more Matthew. Mr Kerrane is doing sterling work with the juniors as always. Sadly there are lots of other distractions once they get into their teenage years. In particular many kids and their parents seem to think they can make it playing football!
What's this? Analysis evening with Pete Leonard on 1 August? Did somebody ask me about this and I forgot that they had (a senior moment, perhaps :D)? What am I supposed to be analysing? I can only think it's my game against Tal in July 1973; this is probably a crafty move by Intermezzo to get me to send him the game for the blog before then!
We are very busy for the next week, preparing to be away for Woolfest in Cockermouth, in two weeks' time. Once we are actually away, I should be able to relax more (certainly, once Woolfest is over), so shall do my utmost to send Intermezzo the game by the end of this month.
As luck would have it, we are actually around on 1 August, before heading off to Edinburgh to teach a week-long spindle spinning course (you really needed to know this :D), so I've put the date in my diary.
Excellent Pete! I had been intending to e-mail you to tell you that I had suggested this to John last Monday as he had no-ones name against that last analysis evening. However, seeing as you now know about this little surprise I was going to suggest that, assuming I can make it myself, we should use the analysis from his session to fill out the game notes and then publish it afterwards. What do you reckon? I can bring me laptop to capture the variations as we discuss them.
Cheers,
'mezzo
That's fine; I've said to John that it isn't that exciting a game - no dramatic attacks or sacrifices. KISS, I thought, when playing someone with Tal's reputation! However, it might be interesting to look at one or two areas (Fritz 6 kept wanting me to Castle Queen's side, after he had gone the other way; again, not against Tal - coward!) in the middle game and then see how I might have won the ending (4 against 3 on opposite sides, with same colour Bs, but his 4 pawns are doubled). We shall see; it could be of interest to others.
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