The most iconic chess set of them all

The Lewis Chess Men at The British Museum

Over the weekend I was in London and had the opportunity to visit one of my favourite places - The British Museum. I've been hankering after a visit ever since the 'History of the World in 100 Objects' series started on Radio 4 at the beginning of this year.

Of course I took in all of the sites but the artifacts that always capture my imagination the most are the Lewis Chessmen. For me they are the most iconic set of chess pieces in existence (at the very least in Europe anyway!) I first saw them when I visited the museum as a child and, even though I couldn't play the game then, those little walrus ivory pieces were so full of character that they burned themselves into my memory banks. I suspect that my romanticised notions of the medieval era and the game of chess, which played such a big part in spurring my interest in the game when I did learn to play it properly in my late teens, probably originated from that first visit to the British Museum all those years ago.

On this trip I learned something new about the Lewis Chessmen. Evidently some of the pieces used to be stained red in colour and it appears that, in the medieval period, it was common practive to have white and red pieces and a white and red checkered board. Black and white evidently only become the norm in more modern times.

Anyway, any visitor to our Hebden Bridge Chess Club website can't help but notice that I have a passion for these particular chess men and I do urge anyone of you planning a visit to London to try and squeeze in half an hour or so to visit the display in The British Museum - it's free! If you aren't going to London any time soon then you can download or listen to the 15 minute episode of the 'History of the World in 100 Objects' about the Lewis Chessmen on the BBC website.

'A' team show Europe's golfers how to drive home an advantage

Montgomerie - nervous on the sidelines

As the European Ryder Cup team crawled fretfully to victory in Wales on Monday afternoon, Hebden Bridge ‘A’ showed them how it should be done as they walloped Todmorden ‘A’ ½ - 4½ on Monday night.

How Colin Montgomerie must have wished he could have picked up his clubs and taken to the course at Celtic Manor as the Ryder Cup drew to a climactic close. When the tension reached unbearable levels I’d guess that he would much rather have been playing the course than Captaining from the side of the greens.

Wrighty - tremendous in the frontlines

There are no such problems for Alastair Wright who Captains the Hebden Bridge ‘A’ team. He gets to have a direct impact on the outcome of his team’s matches and, so far this season, he has led by example with two wins out of two.

John Kerrane provides us with the match report below which is also published in this week’s Hebden Bridge Times (as was the exert from yesterday’s post on the ‘B’ team).

Hebden Bridge ‘A’ travelled to Todmorden on Monday evening to play their ‘A’ team in the first division of the Calderdale Chess League. The Todmorden club has been revived in the last two seasons and now boasts a strong line-up for it’s ‘A’ team. Hebden Bridge were missing two of their regular team members, but nonetheless, came away with a thumping 4½-½ victory. The main features of the match were Dave Shapland’s 16-move win on board 3, taking advantage of Richard Bedford’s exposed King, and Dave Wedge, on board 1, yet again getting into time trouble which would have be desperate for a lesser player, and still emerging with a win against Chris Edwards.

The individual results were:

Todmorden ‘A’ – Hebden Bridge ‘A’

C.Edwards 0 – 1 D.Wedge

S.Gornall 0 – 1 A.Wright

R.Bedord 0 – 1 D.Shapland

P.Edwards 0 – 1 M.Wedge-Roberts

G.Bowker ½ – ½ A.Leatherbarrow

½ – 4½

Here are some highlights from the games themselves. There are usually two sure things that you can stake your house on when the Hebden Bridge teams in Division 1 are playing

1. Dave Wedge will get into horrendous time trouble and yet somehow get away with a result
2. Andy Leatherbarrow will be involved in the last game of the night to finish as he tries to squeeze every drop of juice from his position

So, no surprises then when business was served as usual in this match. Dave got into horrendous time trouble against Chris Edwards but still emerged victorious and Andy Leatherbarrow played a game that finished at 11pm with just bare Kings left on the board!

Here is Dave’s game to which he has kindly added some commentary.

Now for Alastair’s game on board two. I’ve attached the whole game for your pleasure but the start position in the diagram below is at the dramatic denouement.

Finally, here is the board 3 game in which Dave Shapland served up a nice miniature. The notes are Dave’s.

In the next round of Division 1 fixtures the two Hebden Bridge teams will play one another. It will be interesting to see if the ‘B’ team can manage to score more than the half point Halifax ‘A’ and Todmorden ‘A’ have managed against the Champions so far.

Depleted 'B' battle to a draw

Monday night was 'Match Night 2' in Calderdale Evening Chess League Division 1. Hebden Bridge Chess Club had two sides in action. Today we’ll tell the story of the ‘B’ team’s home match against Halifax ‘A’ and tomorrow we’ll cover the ‘A’ team’s match away to Todmorden ‘A’.

John Kerrane picks up the narrative for the ‘B’ team’s match.

The ‘B’ team had to face Halifax without their three strongest players, two of whom (Dave Shapland and Andy Leatherbarrow) were doing duty for the ‘A’ team. Drawing heavily on ‘C’ team regulars, they still managed to finish with a drawn match, with Dave Sugden and John Kerrane winning long games when their opponents, both in difficult positions, ran out of time.

The individual results were:

Hebden Bridge ‘B’ – Halifax ‘A’

M.Syrett 0 – 1 D.Ursal

J.Kerrane 1 – 0 H.Wood

T.Sullivan 0 – 1 C.Velosa

D.Sugden 1 – 0 P.Moss

S.Priest ½ – ½ A.Dawson

2½ – 2½

This was a great result for the ‘B’ team considering the circumstances. Dursan Ursal is the strongest player in the league and therefore board 1 was always likely to be a positive result for Halifax. Needing to score at least 2½ points from the remaining 4 boards was always going to be tough but they did it. Well done chaps!

Here are the two Hebden Bridge wins.

"Unreasonable haste is the direct road to error"

Moliere

All chess players know the truth of these words from French playwright Moliere. Blitz and Lightening games are strewn with errors that wouldn’t occur in games that take place under the auspices of the ‘normal’ time limit. Despite this undoubted truth however, some of us still mismanage ourselves into ‘time trouble’ occasionally. In fact I can think of several current and previous team mates who rather make a habit of it.

Experience suggests to me that, attitudinally, players tend to fall very firmly into one of two camps when it comes to time management. Either, they persistently get themselves into time trouble and then blame the clock for any defeats they may suffer as a result (how many times have you heard the “I was winning at the end but I ran out of time” excuse). Or, they virtually never get into time trouble and simply can’t understand how certain team mates regularly end up ensnared in time scrambles.

I tend to fall into the latter group, but once in a while I do get wrapped up in a position and fall behind on the clock. Usually this is in mid-week league matches where I get 75mins for 35 moves or so. At longer time limits I don’t tend to have problems and, interestingly, the statistical evidence also suggests that I perform rather better. Today's cautionary tale comes from one of the shorter matches and on this occasion both I and my opponent got into quite acute time trouble.



After the game above had finished I’m sure that my opponent must have felt regretful about its outcome, I know I would have done. What really fascinates me though is whether he would have blamed himself for getting into the time trouble that cost him the game. When I've lost games on time in the past I know that I've tended to focus my frustration on the inaccuracy of my moves rather than on the lack of organisation and indecision that led me into the time shortage. You can see from the game above that both players made crucial errors when under pressure to reach time control.

In the end I can't put it any better than Moliere really. The best course of action is to avoid time scrambles!

When castling goes bad!

Way back at the beginning of September I posted some evidence to support the elementary chess principle that castling is, both from a positional and tactical perspective, a necessity in the game of chess. Today I'd like to bring Hebden Bridge Chess Club's members attention to some examples where castling turned out not to be such a good idea. Of course these illustrations all fall into the category of “tactical oversights”. It would seem perfectly possible to argue that the only way castling can be “strategically unsound” is if a player can choose to castle on either side of the board and selects an option that is not consistent with the strategy he has pursued up to that juncture.

Greenpawn34

Let’s begin our exposé with some amusing cases of chess blindness, namely, players castling into an immediate checkmate. My fellow blogger, Greenpawn34, has, once again, come to my aid with the fruits of some insightful database queries.

“Players castling into mate in one. So far I have found 116 examples of this on the 1400 database.” (A database of games played on the Redhotpawn website).

Crash!

Bang!



Is that h1-a8 diagonal going to cause a problem?
White played 16.0-0 and Black check mated him



Wallop!



Watch out for that half open h-file! White played 11.0-0
and Black check mated him



Kapow!

Cunningly, White played 24.Nf4(!) ignoring the enprise
Rook in order to allow Black to play 24...0-0-0?? Oh dear!

In all of the cases above the losing player simply failed to visualise what the position would look like after they'd castled. In other words, they played the move on autopilot and paid the ultimate price. These are fairly unusual cases. However, in contrast to this "instant check mate" scenario, I should imagine that most of us have games in our score books where either ourselves or our opponents have unwittingly castled straight into the teeth of a blistering attack that led us/them to defeat. This can often be a case of, “right idea, wrong time to try it,” or it could be that we’ve underestimated or failed to notice our opponents attacking threats. I’m ashamed to say that these next two examples are not only my own, they are even from the same tournament!

Calderdale Individual Championships 2009/10: Round 2

Calderdale Individual Championships 2009/10: Round 5

Finally, by way of redemption for my sins in the games given above, I offer readers the game below which I played over 15 years ago! I still find it hard to believe that I’ve only played a handful of games since then that I think can hold a candle to this one. In all fairness to my opponent it would have been very difficult for him to envisage the full horror that awaited him when he played 12…0-0.

This one is definitely amongst the “best three wins” in my chess career. I hope to play this well again one day in the next 15 years!