"Through sullen swirling gloom we jolt and roar"

From Dawn by Rupert Brooke

Having only recently returned from his holidays, ‘C’ team Captain, Peter Rawlings has been a busy man. Earlier this week he provided us with a brief report on his team’s demise last Monday against Todmorden ‘B’. Today I am pleased to be able to post this typically lyrical and atmospheric match report (after Rupert Brooke methinks) for the Hebden Bridge ‘C’ team’s match away to Wheatley, which took place on Monday evening.

A comfortable win was achieved in the swirling gloom of Lee Mount, and played out in the vast arena of the upstairs theatre/bar where we sat diminished in a modest corner.

Josh Blinkhorn and Neil Bamford had to slog it out over the long silent evening but the others were soon traversing the empty spaces. Dave Sugden, a victim of the default, had to content himself with friendly games against his manager in which he tactfully lost more than he won.

Wheatley – Hebden Bridge ‘C’

D.Loughenbury 1 – 0 T.Sullivan

DEFAULT 0 – 1 D.Sugden

A.Whiteley 0 – 1 J.Blinkhorn

G.Roper 0 – 1 S.Priest

J.Gregory 0 – 1 N.Bamford

1 – 4

Whilst the 'C' team were acheiving this poetic victory the 'D' team were suffering on the road again, this time (and with the 5-0 defeat at Huddersfield still fresh in the memory from only last Thursday) at the hands of Todmorden 'B'. There was however good news for team Captain, Danny Crampton, in the form of an excellent win by Dave Pugh on board one against L.Innes who out-graded him by 78 points! Unfortunately, I do not have the moves of that game (Mr.Pugh I'd love to publish it if you can e-mail it to me) so instead I will publish Danny's game against Mr Pratt (who, sadly for Danny, did not play like one) from board 4.

The final scorecard for the match was as follows:

Todmorden 'B' – Hebden Bridge ‘D’

L.Innes 0 – 1 D.Pugh

D.Innes 1 – 0 J.Todd

D.Logan 1 – 0 B.Fearnley

R.Pratt 1 – 0 D.Crampton

G.Bowker 1 – 0 P.Dearden

4 – 1

Next week Hebden Bridge Chess Club's 'A' and 'B' teams return to action in Division 1. Stay tuned!

Tying up some loose ends

Today I’m going to post some solutions and oddments as a means of bringing a few discussions to a close.

First of all, my “Bent Double” puzzle which I set for you to ponder when I posted my tribute to the Great Dane a couple of weeks ago. The solution is given below:

Congratulations to Fruitcake who claimed the proffered prize (a pint of his choosing at our beloved home venue, The Trades Club) on Monday night. The solution really is quite marvellous. It is quite hard to find simply because it doesn’t really fit with any standard mating patterns. Usually chess puzzles (especially mating solutions) can be solved by looking for well known and frequently recurring patterns and themes amongst the pieces in the starting position. Well done Fruitcake!

Now onto more serious matters… A couple of weeks ago I demonstrated that the final position of the final game in the final round of the Hebden Bridge Chess Club Lightening Competition contained hidden depths. The game between father and son Dave Wedge and Matthew Wedge-Roberts was adjudicated to be a win for white (Dave) and no one in the room could have argued with that for he was an exchange up in an apparently straightforward end game.

However, on closer inspection it turned out that the position was not at all easy to win for white. Indeed, I casually played out the game against my computer and found it to be quite tough. Therefore I asked readers of this blog to contribute solutions. I’m happy to say that the main protagonist himself has come forward with a methodology for white to win. I publish this along with my original notes below. In my view this endgame study is highly instructive and I encourage all readers to spend a bit of time running through it.

My thanks go to Dave for taking the time to find the answer. I hope he found the process of uncovering it as interesting as I did failing to find it!

Finally, I’d like to post a witty little denouement to a blitz game that I played last week at my other club, Leeds. I was playing white and feeling pretty glum in the position given below. I had been well ahead in the game and successively blundered away my advantage. Now I seemed destined to lose. But then, I managed to find a nice defensive resource. What does white play in the position below? Try to find the solution before hitting the “forward” button.

Following on from an article I posted a month or so back about knowing the right time to resign I’d like to offer this example as evidence to support the argument that, in blitz games, you really should play on in a theoretically lost position for as long as possible because you never know what might turn up!

'C' team edged out by Todmorden

Today I bring you the final round up from a busy schedule of League fixtures last week. First of all, ‘C’ team Captain, Pete Rawlings, gives us his assessment of his side’s match against Todmorden ‘B’.

Pete Rawlings: did not go to
Khanty-Mansiysk on his holidays! 

The ‘C’ team captain-manager was in foreign parts (rumours that he was helping the English men’s team prepare for the Chess Olympiad in Siberia are greatly exaggerated! – Intermezzo) for the opening match of the season, at home to the newly-formed Todmorden ‘B’, hence, this match report is very late. In his absence, the team shed a player somehow, so everyone that did play had to move up one board. The final outcome was a 2-3 defeat which, in the circumstances, wasn’t too bad. Dave Sugden and Steve Priest won the points.


A full strength team lines up on the 27th of September away to Wheatley, wherever that is (as everyone asks).

Thanks to Pete for going above and beyond the call of duty to bring us that report from his pool-side sun lounger. Good luck to the ‘C’ team tonight as they return to action tonight against Wheatley (wherever that is!) Below is the match card from last week:

Hebden Bridge ‘C’ – Todmorden ‘C’

D.Sugden 1 – 0 L.Innes

J.Blinkhorn 0 – 1 D.Innes

S.Priest 1 – 0 P.Logan

N.Bamford 0 – 1 G.Bowker

P.Dearden 0 -1 J.P. Ellis

2 – 3

This just leaves me with the task of providing readers with the match card for what turned out to be a very difficult night for the ‘D’ team away to Huddersfield ‘B’ last Thursday.

Huddersfield ‘B’ – Hebden Bridge ‘D’

C.Stratford 1 – 0 D.Pugh

S.Oliver 1 – 0 D.Crampton

E.Mellor 1 – 0 J.Todd

J.Hughes 1 – 0 B.Fearnley

D.Tyfa 1 – 0 DEFAULT

5 – 0

The ‘D’ team are away again this evening against Todmorden ‘C’. Fingers crossed that they can get off the mark in that fixture.

The chess widow's husband

Marcel Duchamp: played chess on his honeymoon

Last Saturday my wife and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary and our thirteenth year together as a couple. Despite all of the jokes that I suffered in the immediate aftermath of our nuptials, about no longer being allowed out of the house unattended, I must say that being married has not in any way impeded my commitment to the game. Conversely, nor has my chess addiction had an adverse effect on our marriage. After all, having been together for so long my wife knew exactly what she was getting when she tied the knot.

In fact, I suspect that the love of my life feels there are numerous, and far more reprehensible pastimes to which she could have been metaphorically “widowed”. Never the less, I feel lucky to have found someone who accepts my need to spend long hours indulging in an activity that most people consider to be a boring waste of time!

Chess mania is certainly capable of causing marital disharmony. No cautionary tale is more graphic than that of artist and chess player Marcel Duchamp who, having already succumbed completely to his own chess addiction made the rather naive decision to get hitched to a lady called Lydie Sarrazin-Levassor in 1927. On their honeymoon in the south of France he immediately proceeded to commit a heinous infidelity by spending most of his time playing games at the Nice Chess Club and studying problems (“self mates” I imagine!) in their hotel suite. Finally, his irate bride decided that enough was enough and glued his chess pieces to their board whilst he was asleep! The marriage only lasted three months after which Duchamp was able, once again, to devote himself entirely to his jealous and demanding “mistress”.

I don’t think I’ll ever get to the stage where I’ll be trying my wife’s patience to the extent that Duchamp was with poor Lydie. Compared to Duchamp – and at serious risk of stretching the "infidelity" metaphor to breaking point – I am only flirting drunkenly with a very attractive lady who is completely out of my league and who will, as she always does, spurn my clumsy advances with a crushing put down just at the moment I’m starting to think, "Hello, I might be in here!"

Smokin' season opener for the 'A's

Can you smell burning rubber?

If you were out and about in Halifax on Monday evening you may have noticed an acrid burning smell in the night air.

The cause of the stench was Hebden Bridge Chess Club's 'A' team generating serious wheel spin as they accellerated off the start line in their first match of the new league season against Halifax 'A'. The impressive winning margin was 4½ - ½!

Board 5 player Nick Sykes provides us with the match report for this encounter.

"Hebden Bridge 'A’ travelled to Halifax as reigning Division 1 Champions and were confident of a successful start to the season against last year’s whipping boys, Halifax ‘A’. However, Halifax have substantially bolstered their line up since last season when they were seriously affected by the sad loss of Derek Holmes mid-way through the campaign.

This year they effectively have two new recruits. On board 1 the arrival of Darwin Ursal from the Philippines gives them (on paper at least) the strongest player in the league and on board 2 Howard Wood looks like he may feature regularly for the team this season having only played a couple of matches last year. This meant that Ray Cully, who last season took up Derek’s mantle on board 1, is now playing on board 5! This is the strongest line up that Halifax have been able to put out for some years and that has to be good for the competitiveness of the division in general.

However, despite this extra strength, Halifax were unable to prevent Hebden Bridge from making a superb score of 4½.

On board 4, Matthew Wedge-Roberts illustrated just why he will be playing in every match for the ‘A’ team this season by comprehensively dismantling Pete Moss in short order. Matthew has been one of the fastest improving players in the league for the last two or three seasons and played the opening very confidently, quickly establishing a big pawn centre against Pete’s quiet Reti System. On move 8 he won a pawn and then from move 16 he unleashed a powerful attack that White failed to defend accurately against and he was soon wiped out. The moves from Black’s 16th are given below.

 

Matthew Parsons was next to finish on board 2 claiming another victim with his pet 'Pterodactyl Variation' (1.e4 g6 2.d4 Bg7 3.Nf3 c5) which on this occasion transposed into a hybrid Sicilian. The position stayed roughly equal for quite a long time but Matthew slowly built up a big advantage on the clock and this later expressed itself on the board as well when he created an imbalance by exchanging his Rook for a Bishop and pawn and a very promising position. Howard eventually overstepped the time limit on move 27 but his position at the board was already extremely grave.

The 3rd game to finish was mine own against Ray Cully. I got an advantageous position out of the opening and then Ray went for a dodgy knight sacrifice on move 18. I had to defend accurately but managed to find the right moves. The game is given in full below.

On board 1 Dave Wedge found himself in the slightly unusual position of being the under dog against Halifax's new recruit, Darwin Ursal. It was certainly to Dave's advantage that the opening variation they played was the Modern Benoni - one of Dave's favourites. The game ended in a draw which was a good result against a very strong opponent. The full game is given below.

 

Last to finish on the night was team Captain, Alastair Wright, who demonstrated excellent technique in remorselessly grinding down Carlos Velosa in a From's Gambit line of Bird’s Opening (1.f4).

In all a satisfying start to the season for Hebden Bridge 'A'. Next up is Todmorden 'A' away on the 4th of October."

Thank's to Nick for his report. That just leaves me with the task of presenting the match scorecard.

Halifax 'A' vs. Hebden Bridge 'A'

D.Ursal ½ - ½ D.Wedge

H.Wood 0 - 1 M.Parsons

C.Velosa 0 - 1 A.Wright

P.Moss 0 - 1 M.Wedge-Roberts

R.Cully 0 - 1 N.Sykes

½ - 4½