Knocked out!

Our campaign in the summer chess cup came to an in-glorious end last night when we were knocked out by Jesmond.

Based on the handicap system, a 3-1 result would have seen us through, and things were looking bright when they defaulted on bottom board and Paul Dargan worked his customary magic (more later) to quickly put us 2-0 up.

It then became a tale of two positions that on face of it appeared good for us, but where deeper inspection revealed considerable difficulties:











I'm playing White in the left hand position. I'd messed up a good situation from the opening, and then went in for this position thinking that with Black's knight 'offside' on h5 and queen 'out of the game' on b2, I would still be able to drum up some winning tries. It turns out though that both the queen and knight (controlling g3 and h4) are well positioned, and that White has considerable difficulties, e.g. after Rb1 Qd2, Black is threatening Qe3+, meanwhile Black's a8 rook is threatening to join the game with tempo. Unbelievably White is probably losing already; after 18 minutes thought I found one of the quickest ways:

1 Qb3?? Rxe2 0-1

So, with the score 2-1, Darren Laws had to win his game (right hand position). He's a pawn up but it looks difficult to win: after

1 ... Rb2 (correction, I'd initially posted Rb1+); 2 Nf1 (as 2 Rd3 loses to Rxd2; 3 Rxd2 Nf3+)

You suddenly realise it's even worse than that: White has no constructive moves and can only sit and wait for Black to improve his position. Desperately short of time and needing to win, Darren eventually sacrificed 2 pawns to break his king out of the prison, but the ending was then lost and the flag fall put both Darren and our team out of its misery!

On a happier note, let's finish with Paul Dargan's win. Playing a Sveshnikov as Black, he's generated a typical sicilian counter-attack, reaching this position after White's 17th move:











Here Paul played 17 ... Rc8! and after

18 Kf1? Rxc3! had a crushing attack. The game finished 19 h3 Rxd3!; 20 c3 Be2+; 21 Kel Rxc3! (sacrificing the same rook for the third time!); 22 fe Rc2; 23 f4 Qxd2+; 24 Kf2 Bd3 mate

Analysis shows that White had no good defence after 17 ... Rc8!, Paul gives a variation in ending a beautiful smothered mate if White tries 18 Be2:

18 ... Bxe2; 19 Nxe2 Nf3+; 20 Kf1 Nxd2+; 21 Ke1 Nf3+; 22 Kf1 Qe1+; 23 Rxe1 Nd2 mate:

Knockout chess

Tonight my team are playing in the second round of the summer knockout cup.

To allow teams from all the league divisions to compete on an equal footing, the cup, played over 4 boards, has a handicapping system. It used to be simple: if the difference between the teams was 1 division, the lower team got a 0.5 head-start added to their score; 2 divisions a 1.5 head-start; 3 divisions a 2.5 head-start; and 4 divisions difference gave the lower team a 3.5 head-start.

Noting that some lower teams were disproportionately strong led to a revision of rules based on the total grading of the team, and more recently to a complex set of changes based not only on total grading of the team, but also on the grading of the board 2 player.

The upshot of this is, unless you've remembered to take rules with you to a match, you can be sat there not knowing how many points you need to progress. This is what happened in our first round encounter with Forest Hall: we'd won on the other boards and just my game remained. Unfortunately, I didn't know whether a win or a draw was needed to make sure we progressed to the next round.

Playing Black I've squeezed the maximum I can out of this ending of knight vs. bad bishop, but White's passed d5 pawn is strong enough to hold the balance:











I can win the a-pawn, but it's dangerous as it lets the White king launch a counterattack. This though is the only chance to play for a win. At this stage White had about 2 minutes remaining and Black about 5. The game continued:

1 ... Kb4; 2 Kd2 Kxa4; 3 Ke3 Kb4; 4 Kf4 Kc3 (to draw the White king to the 5th rank before capturing, making the e4 pawn more dangerous) 5 Ke5 Nxc4

and now White should try 6 Kxe4! when it is Black who has to find the right moves with the Knight to stop the d-pawn and prove a draw. Instead White played 6 Bxc4? and after 6 ... Kxc4; 7 Kxe4 Kxb5 Black went on to win.

As it happens, a draw would of been sufficient. Not that that would have been in my nature anyway! I'll think about taking the rules to tonight's match.