York Congress

Bad start to New Year's Resolution
One of my resolutions for this year was to write up the account of each tournament sooner rather than leaving it for ages - this resolution has got off to a bad start, since it's taken me a week to get around to writing about the events at the York Congress last weekend.

Jan 8th 2010
A touching reunion
It was an interesting event in many ways also. Colin Fell had been going to come up for it but cancelled due to all the snow. However Dave Stephenson was still coming along with Nigel Fleming. Nigel was a friend of Dave's from University, where they both played chess, but they had lost touch and had not met for 20+ years. I'm happy to say that my chess 'blog was what brought them back together. Dave was reading the 'blog a few months ago and saw Nigel's name and asked me if it could be the same person. I thought that was unlikely since Nigel lived in New York and as far as I was concerned he was an American. He had moved to London by this time, with work, and it turned out that he was Dave's old friend. The York tournament was their first meeting for many years. I'm glad to have been the conduit for such a touching reunion.

Hike through a blizzard
The first round of the York event was on Friday night. The weather was touch and go; I had my doubts whether Nigel would make it up from London, but he got the train and all was smooth-running. He met Dave in the afternoon. I drove up from Leeds and arrived at the venue at about 5pm. By this time I was not really in the mood for playing chess, and since it turned out that Nigel felt the same, we agreed to take a bye in Round 1 and dedicate ourselves to a few beers instead. Dave was still going to play.

I parked at the venue - a sports centre on the outskirts of York - and walked into the city centre to meet up with Nigel and Dave. It was about a 45 minute walk. I was compelled to stop in a pub en route to ask for directions. As I got about half-way there, a serious blizzard started and I walked for a mile or so through heavy snow. By the time I got to the railway station to meet Nigel I looked like a snowman. We had a drink in the station bar and then went to another pub for a few more and a nice dinner. It was an enjoyable evening with chess chat and general grumbling about life over a few beers.

Obviously, I couldn't drive home, so I got the train back at about 9.15pm. I got home about half-past eleven after a long wait at Leeds station.

Saturday Jan 9th
Round 2

After five hours' sleep, I got up at 5am for the 5.55 bus back to Wakefield. Read my book at Wakefield station for 90 minutes, got back to York, did the 45 minute walk to the venue and was there on time for a 9.30am start. Despite the lack of sleep, the beers seem to have done me good and I felt a lot more up for it. Sometimes a health-giving night like that is just what you need! Nigel agreed that he felt a lot better for the evening off. Dave wasn't so happy - he had been drawn in the first round on Friday against a very strong player called Dave Surtees, who is famous for the eccentricity of his openings. The game had been a long-drawn-out grind, no pieces taken, both players short of time, and Dave had missed a three-fold repetition which would have given him a guaranteed draw.

The venue wasn't too bad. I had attended the tournament a couple of times to watch Dave play but never taken part myself before because I've always had things to do this weekend. For one thing the York Book Fair is on, and I attend that with Julian Bodger normally. I had been planning to go this year, taking a bye on the Saturday afternoon for that purpose, but then I heard from Julian that the book fair was another casualty of the snow.

Normally I don't like playing in sports centres, but it wasn't too draughty, and the refreshments were of a high standard - including beer! Unfortunately, the turnout was very low, about half the numbers I remember from previous years - again, because of the snow - so we were rather rattling around in the large sports hall.

My Saturday morning game went pretty well. It was against a teenaged player rated about 111 who played the 2. a3 Sicilian, and I was soon in a good position. I spotted some tactics and was able to win relatively comfortably. Nice to win the first game of 2010 - a marked contrast to the disasterous start to 2009 where I got 0/3 at Coulsdon. In fact, I lost my first 7 tournament games in 2009, so I was already off to a better start.

Dave, Nigel and I found a pub for lunch (after a few false starts) and then returned to the venue for round 3.

Round 3

Tiredness was starting to catch up with me, and I was playing a young bloke rated 122, one of the top seeds for the tournament, so I decided to keep things simple and solid and see if I could get a draw. I had the White pieces and he played the Albin Counter-Gambit. Soon the Queens came off and we were in a totally symmetrical end-game, so we agreed a draw. I was happy enough with 1.5/2 for the day.

I had been going to Neill Ford's birthday party, but it was cancelled owing to the weather. Dave had been repeatedly asking me to come out with him and Nigel for dinner, so I asked Michelle if she wanted to come up for York. To her credit, she left the warm house to come to York in the snow for dinner with a bunch of chess players! We had a nice meal in Cafe Rouge, and still managed to get back home quite early. Nigel found a pub to get back to the beer-drinking and watch the American Football and Dave went back to his room to do some analysis of his games, being the true professional he is. I just went home and went to bed. It had been a long day what with the 5am start and the two tough games.

Sunday Jan 10th
Round 4

Travelling to the venue by car was rather easier than the previous day's trek, but I still managed to be a few minutes late.

As luck would have it, I was drawn against the father of the boy I'd beaten the morning before, once again as Black, and once again I managed quite an easy win after spotting a tactic. I won't be popular in the Woodcock household! It was a good game for me from the start as he let me play a main line Benko which is one of my favourite openings , and one I don't often get the opportunity to play. I like the fact that it's got a ready-made plan and so you know what you're doing in the middle-game. I got myself into the traditional Benko configuration and was able to take advantage of a slight weakness in his development to pin and then win a Knight, after which it was fairly plain sailing, though he fought on for a long time a piece down. I told him afterwards that I was a specialist in c0cking up won games, so he was quite right to fight on.

Dave, stung by my comment that he'd been playing rather stodgy stuff the day before, came out all guns blazing and had exchanged his Queen for 3 pieces. His game went right to the wire with a time-scramble and controversy in the final moments when he mistakenly moved his King two squares in his frenzy! Fortunately he managed to win in the end.

Nigel and I had lunch in the pub again.

Round 5

I was on 3/4 by this point and so was up on the dizzy heights of board 2 for my final game. The tournament pays out fixed prizes so I knew that if I won my game and got 4/5 I would win £70. A draw would pay nothing, so there was no point in playing safe.

I was playing a girl from Durham University who had been having a very good tournament beating all comers so I knew it was going to be tough.

It turned out to be a real battle - I was White and it was an f3 Nimzo-Indian. This is an opening I like because of the complex and double-edged positions which result, but sadly I almost always seem to lose with!

I was a bit too slow to get going on the Kingside and spent too much time concerning myself with a backward pawn on c3, and so I let her get pressure and a comfortable position. I managed to fend off the worst of it, and interestingly even though I felt my position was poor, when I put it into the computer later on, Fritz (the analysis programme) considered that my position had been slightly better throughout.

I did have weaknesses and fell a pawn down after missing a tactic on the Queenside, which Dave said I should have seen, but got a passed d-pawn in compensation, and was still up slightly according to Fritz.

Then she rather rashly then plonked her Rook on h5 in front of my King and I saw that it could be trapped if I were to advance the Kingside pawns starting with g4. The computer agreed but unfortunately I played it a couple of moves too late by which time she'd managed to take my passed pawn. g4 and h4 trapped her Rook and she had to exchange it for my Knight, but unfortunately I'd so compromised my Kingside pawns to achieve this that she had plenty of compensation for the lost material - and I didn't have the asset of my passed d-pawn any longer.

Very quickly my position fell apart and I was forced to resign on move 35 or so. She won the tournament - I went home with nothing.

Well no cash, at least, but I was pretty pleased with 3/5. I had two good wins and a draw against much higher-rated players, I'd made no real tactical blunders in 4 games (apart from the lost pawn in the final game), and I'd been playing on the top boards with a chance of a prize at the end, which is always nice. Overall, a satisfying performance.

Dave ended up with 3/5 as well which is excellent considering he was playing in the Open. Nigel was in the Open too, and played some good games without quite getting as good a result which meant he had to hand over £20 to Dave to settle a bet they'd made about who would do better. Dave had been desperate to get a game against Nigel but sadly they weren't drawn against one another. Showdown deferred.

There was no chess this week in the League because of all the snow, so I've not played since my final round game at York. My parents were supposed to be visiting this weekend, but that got cancelled too, so I've been getting in some chess training for the Gonzaga tournament in Dublin which is coming up in 2 weeks. I have played there five times in the past, and never done all that well. Last year was a disasterous 0/3, so I'm hoping to keep the good form going and get a good result there this year. Though there will be the traditional beer night with all my Irish friends to get through the day before the tournament starts...