British Championship - part 2

GAME 1, MONDAY AUG 2ND

I drove back to Canterbury rather nervous about my prospects, after that poor warm-up. The journey went well and I got back to the venue in good time. I looked at the draw and saw that fortune had smiled on me, finally, as I’d been given a very good draw indeed, against a lower-rated player whom I’d beaten quite easily at Scarborough. It’s critical in these events to get off to a good start, and here was my opportunity.

I was White and the game was a Queen’s Gambit Declined. This is a solid opening I hardly ever lose with, but often have problems forcing a win. And I really wasn’t in the market for a draw, since I needed a good start to the tournament.

For well over an hour, my opponent, Andrew Camp, played good solid chess. I made a slight mistake early on, carelessly allowing him to fork my Queen and Bishop with his Knight, forcing me to give up the good Bishop, but I managed to make the best of it, and could take advantage of his Knight being missing to station my Knight powerfully in the centre of the board. Just when things were looking level and I was starting to consider having to accept a draw, he made a bad mistake and allowed me to get a Knight fork of my own, winning his Rook for my Knight.

After that, it was a mopping-up operation, because his Bishop was blocked in with his own pawns, and my Rooks were on open files, so it was easy to finish up the win. I had a chat to him afterwards, very sound man indeed – turns out that he met his current partner because he was her daughter’s school chess teacher. All three of them – him, her and the little girl, are here playing in the championships.

I went to the Gulbenkian theatre (where I am now sitting writing this) for my lunch, a sausage and cheese Panini and a pint, and then went and spent the afternoon wandering around the Grandmaster games and sitting and listening to Andrew Martin doing the commentary. This is how I have spent every afternoon here.

I checked into my B&B, which is really very good indeed. It’s a house on a fairly busy road about half-an-hour’s walk from here, and it’s one of the best-run and most well-organised B&B’s I’ve ever stayed in. My room is very small, just a box room, but excellent value for money as a result. The owners are full of great ideas for nice little touches – for instance they let people eat take-away food in the restaurant, and the rooms have corkscrews and bottle-openers provided. I had brought a bottle of wine and on my 2nd day I noticed they’d left a wine-glass in my room. The breakfasts are very good too – more than the usual range of choices of just the normal greasy breakfast. I have had the smoked haddock with poached eggs – and they have delights like prunes and marmite available which suits me. So if anyone ever has to stay in Canterbury in the future, I can recommend the Four Seasons B&B.

Monday night, I walked down the hill from the chess venue and had a meal in a Wetherspoons pub, before going to a pub recommended by the B&B owner, the Parrot, which was a very sound traditional old English pub near the Cathedral – half-timbered medieval building, serving nice Kentish Ales. I got talking to a very nice couple who were on a cycling tour, and we had a game of dominoes, in which I came last! It turned out they they (like me) had been to Nottingham University, and both were PhDs – his was in medieval pottery kilns and hers was in the GPS system.

I went back to my B&B and went to bed.

GAME 2, TUESDAY AUG 3rd

After a light breakfast, I drove back to the venue, to find out that the draw hadn’t been so kind to me on day 2 – I was Black against one of the strongest players in the event, a young bloke rated 133. Controversially, this is a under-120 event, but people entered using last year’s grades, which expired in July, so some of them are now rated above 120. Russell Goodfellow, predictably, is furious about it, and has referred to the ECF in terms not appropriate for this ‘blog because of that. I can see their reasons, but it’s rather annoying to have to play someone so strong in what is supposed to be an under-120 event. Even more ludicrously, there was a junior rated 145 in the weekend event Colin and I had played in, who unsurprisingly won all five of his games.

Anyway, there was nothing for it but to knuckle down and try and make the most of what was a tough draw. He was a big, solid, bloke who looked like a rugby player and was clearly going to be a seriously tough proposition. Fortunately for me, he allowed me to play one of my favourite openings – a main-line Benko Gambit, at which I have had some very good results. It’s a good opening because it contains a ready-made plan (attack on the a and b files) which means you are less likely to drift in the middle-game.

I reached a fairly comfortable position in the middle-game as a result, typical Benko position – a pawn down, but totally solid and with domination on the a and b files. Several pieces came off, then I made a move which I thought was good, but then I realised lost a pawn – he was clearly very sharp at tactics and immediately saw the refutation of my plan. I had to give the pawn up, going 2 pawns down, but then – flukily – saw there was an immediate way to regain the pawn. People say there’s no luck in chess, but there is, because I hadn’t calculated this position, but once the dust settled I realised I was getting my pawn back. He played very fast and was a long way up on the clock, but I managed to keep enough time to avoid time problems as the endgame proceeded.

He still had a passed a-pawn, but was tying up pieces defending it, so in the end he gave it up in an attempt to lure my remaining pieces off-side and attack on the other wing. Happily for me, I was able to see his plan and the tactics, and re-centralise my Knight in time. Eventually everything got swapped off until we only had a King and a pawn each left and we called it a draw.
He was very complementary about how I’d played – he obviously expected an easier time, given my rating. I was very pleased – I thought this was one of my best results, and 1.5/2 left me handily placed for the rest of the tournament since I’d already played probably the best player in the section. And since then he’s had two wins, which proves the point.

After the game, I drove to Herne Bay for a look around. It’s a place I’ve never been to but knew about because it’s where Jeeves goes for his annual holiday (for the shrimping!). I took some photos of the beach and had a beer and a cheese salad roll and some mince pies. The sun was out and it was quite pleasant, though Herne Bay proved to be a rather an unprepossessing place – low-key and low-brow, but not as grotty as places like Blackpool.

I went back to the tournament where I was going to meet Morgan Daniels who wasn’t playing, but was coming along to watch some Grandmaster games and take some photos for his own chess ‘blog.