New chess season

Leicester
Hello from Leicester where I am now in a hotel room getting ready for the first tournament of the new season. I've not played this one before but I'm told that numbers are down. Michelle is here with me tonight, though tomorrow she will go home and I will be sharing this room with Morgan Daniels who is coming up for the event. Something of a contrast in bunkmates!

This weekend, the Galway tournament is also going on - and I've played that every year since 2005 (normally with signal lack of success but plenty of Guinness!), so I'm sorry to miss it because it's a good event, but the rocky state of my finances forces my hand this year.

We went down South yesterday and accompanied my sound work colleague Ian Imms to the St Albans Beer Festival, another of the best events of the year - superb range of beers, even though it was a bit busy and we were rather tired. We stayed at Ian's house in Berkhampsted. Yesterday he cooked us a splendid macaroni cheese and today he got up at 6am to make us porridge! It's been raining hard all day, so the drive up here was a bit painful. But at least it makes for a good weekend to spend hunched over the chess table.

British Championship disappointment
I never finished the story of the British Championship, for which I apologise; probably never got around to it owing to the trauma of the last round. In brief, I went along to the final round in joint first place on 3.5/4. I was on board 2 playing an ungraded player, which is always a dodgy thing to find yourself up against in the bottom section. Turned out, of course, that he was very good - we got into a complex position. I got a pawn up, but then blundered , retaking a piece with the wrong piece and going material down. The players on board 1, the other joint leaders, inspected my position and agreed a draw. I ended up losing, though gallingly I also missed a chance to retake the material back shortly afterwards. It's funny how often that happens when one makes a mistake - I need to keep looking harder for opportunities after I've made a mistake.

And so, I didn't win the British Under 120 championship. Four people tied for first on 4/5 and I ended in joint 5th on 3.5/5. I went to a farmers' market/deli for lunch and laid my plans for next year - I swore to myself there and then to work all season towards one simple goal - to win next year's British. I have decided to treat all games and tournaments until then as merely practice for the Big One. It's a good chance for me too, because next year it's being held in Sheffield which is commutable from where I live - just 25 minutes down the motorway, so I won't have to shell out for accommodation and will have a sort of home advantage I hope.

I went to the closing ceremony and listened to "egghead" CJ De Mooi give the closing speech. It sounds like next year's tournament will be good one, with all the UK top 4 Grandmasters playing, (Adams, Short, McShane and Howell), so it will be a good one to be at. I will write some more about chess goals for the year in a later post.

Good start to the new season
The new chess season started for me last Wednesday with a league game. The organiser of the West Bretton club sadly died and so the West Bretton club has merged with Netherton, whom I play for - we now have 3 teams out of the 7 in the Huddersfield League! Wednesday saw our 'C' team whom I turn out for, take on the 'B' team in the village hall. We were pretty outgraded on every board. I was playing a young girl who had a Yorkshire grade of 127, considerably higher than my 114; but it was even worse than it sounds - I checked the English Chess website on there and discovered that on that site, she's graded 139 based on 51 games. So it was a tough game for me.

I haven't got time to write about it now because I have to get off to my first round game, but the good news is that, having struggled most of the game, and being in moderate time trouble (I had to make 9 moves in 5 minutes, which is nothing by Russell Goodfellow's standards but it felt pressured to me), I managed to find a tactic which won me a Rook and pawn for a Knight, and got the Queens off - which meant I went into an ending completely winning. I managed to win the ensuing King and Pawn end-game and was the only one from our team who won a game. As a 139, she was my highest-rated victim ever, so it was a good confidence-boost.

Right, better get off to round 1. I'm sorry this is rushed, but I wanted to get it written before tonight's game. I will try and update the journal quicker than I managed last season!