Thursday, March 01, 2007

Stoneleigh Trophy, Update!

The format of the Stoneleigh Trophy encourages chess violence: Two teams of four players face other twice in one evening - once with black, once with white - and in each game the time limit is half an hour each. And so it proved on Monday night, when a Streatham & Brixton Chess Club team faced Crystal Palace down at their venue on the edge of London. The final score was 5-3 to us, with only two games drawn out of the eight.

Hero of the evening was Martin on board 2, who scored 100% against Anthony Andrews - an opponent who has a rapid ECF of 178, no less. Martin's second game with black was particularly exciting to watch from the neighbouring board. "I suspect my opponent smelt the blood of revenge after 9 e6 and 10 Ng5, and I got a strong whiff of it too!" emails Martin in retrospect, and indeed with his King 'developed' on c6 things looked rather tricky. But at this speed limit, the tables can turn at the drop of a hat. Here's the game.

7 comments:

ejh said...

School of Haldane rather than School of Horton, that one.

Anonymous said...

Nice one.

I believe years ago I lost (as White) against Martin in this very same variation. Our game was infinitely more one sided though.

25. ...Qh6 was amusing/sadistic (delete as appropriate) as opposed to just snapping off the Queen with 25. ... Bxf3+. It must take some self control and confidence in your analysis to pass up winning a Queen for nothing. I'm not sure I'd have bothered looking further.

That must be why you're graded 40+ points above me Martin!

Tom Chivers said...

Ah, Martin and I put the game together together from each of our memories - I suspect there's a move order error in our recollection around that point. I'll try to work it out. Thanks for pointing it out.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps no error ...

White can save the Queen after of course but then Black wins a piece and looks (at first sight at least)as if he can then force mate by SomethingBig to h1.

Anonymous said...

Actually I'm talking nonsense...

Black had already played ...Qh6 before ...Bg4 so Black never had the chance to win the Queen instead of developing the attack.

Tom Chivers said...

No you were completely right.

But - I worked out where the error was, and corrected the game score.

Cheers!

Anonymous said...

i love Sicilian:Alapin, best oppening against Sicilian, hehe