Wakefield v Netherton

Here is the report of the rest of the Grange over Sands event. Sorry its been a while coming. With it being summer, and the close season, chess hasn't been on my mind. That will all change with the first tournament of the 2009-10 season starting. I am going to be playing at Hereford, a tournament I've not taken part in before. This will be a special event as well because Colin is going to be playing in it - his first long play tournament in a couple of years I think.

I did in fact play in one chess game over the past couple of months, a one-off match between Netherton, my village and Wakefield, which is held every year. Netherton, despite being just a little village, normally wins, but we had lost last year and so we wanted to regain the trophy. It was played at Wakefield's home venue which is a sports club - the chess is played in the bowling club groundsman's sheds, which is a slightly unusual venue even by chess standards, as there are mowing machines and bags of grass fertiliser between the tables.

I managed to win my game - my opponent was one of these old chaps with a healthy disregard for opening theory, whos play seemed to move between passivity and bravado. When I tell you that the game began

1 d3 d5
2 c3 e5
3 Nd2 c5
4 e4 Nf6
5 h3 Be7
6 a3 o-o
7 g4

I think you will see what I mean. Like usual when people play bizarre stuff like that, it was frustrating because even though I knew objectively it was wrong it was hard to wear him down and the Kingside pawns were always a problem.

When I was going to the bar for a beer, one of my team members told me that if I kept it tight I would win in the end-game, this chap being notoriously bad at endings. And so it proved - I eventually won a pawn in a tactic and won easily in the endgame when he seemed to lose the will to carry on.

Nice to get a win anyway.

Now here's the next episode of the Grange-over-Sands story from June.

Lancaster, Saturday June 6th

A familiar traumatic defeat against a weak player last night. My opponent was a very shy-looking weedy youth of about 20who didn't look me in the eye or interact with me in any way throughout. His rating was 38, which I think is about 600 in ELO terms, so should in theory have been an easy win, though it never works out that way.

The game was very slow and fairly dull. I was White in a Dutch. He took no risks and I built up slowly to a small positionaladvantage, as I almost always seem to against weaker players. Dave Stephenson was there by this time, spectating, and hewas able to watch my game as it got to a denouement.

As always seems to happen, just as I was getting into a good position and about to administer the coup de gras, it all crashed horribly and I got mated.

Bit of a nightmare.

On the plus side, the venue is very nice, an old Victorian hotel overlooking the bay at Grange over sands. Faded 19thcentury grandeur and now rather down-at-heel, like so many of our seaside towns - but not grim like Blackpool; rathermore genteel and understated. I had quite a nice turkey sandwich during the game.

Precepts-wise I did ok - no beer, no early resignations or anything. Just the classic problem of messing up a won position. Im not too sure what I do to rectify that.

Time for breakfast now.