Parsons knows



Matthew Parsons will be filling the
Dave Wedge-shaped vacancy on
board 1 for the 'A'  team this season

Today’s post comes courtesy of Hebden Bridge Chess Club’s highest graded player, Matthew Parsons. In a post from earlier this week we covered off his successes at the Huddersfield Rapidplay and the Club Lightning competition but Matthew had started his warm up routine for the new league season even earlier as he explains below.

Over the Bank Holiday weekend in August I played in the Major Section (Under 170) at Leyland Chess Congress. With my ECF grade of 167 taking preference over my YCA (174), which would have placed me in the Open, I could have expected to be one of the favourites for the 1st prize. There were two other players with the same grade as me and one higher, Abigail Pritchard, who was graded 168. She, like myself, did not have the best tournament. I finished on 3.5/6, with 3 wins, 2 defeats, and 1 draw.

As you will see from the games below, the 2 defeats were nothing to do with my opponent beating me, but rather foolish errors from myself. In round 1 I over-pressed against a weaker opponent, searching too hard for a win, only to blunder in time trouble and lose. In round 4 I had a totally won ending which I messed up in terrific style.

My play was sporadically good, but I was definitely very rusty having not played over the board since March, where as many of the other players in the tournament had played in various sections at the British Championships in Sheffield earlier in the month. I also found myself exhausted each day, much more so than normal. That said, it was a good warm up for the league season and hopefully any rustiness is now out of my system.

In fact I finished 2nd at the Huddersfield Rapidplay Open Section last weekend, beating the top seed Peter Shaw in round 1 in the process, a player graded over 200. My play on this day was at another level to how I played at Leyland.

Here are the games from Leyland with my own annotations.


My thanks go to Matthew for taking the time to provide this report and annotated games to us. I hope that other players will find his thoughts enlightening and entertaining.

The Calderdale League season begins next Monday the 19th of September with all four of the club’s teams in action as both leagues 1 and 2 kick off. A full list of the season’s fixture can be found on the new Calderdale League website and all fixtures pertinent to Hebden Bridge teams can be found by visiting the “Calderdale League Fixtures 2011-12” page on this site.