Chess WITH THE KNIGHT
A: White to play
IT must be a miserable job to have to write articles about a team or organisation that you support when they are doing badly.
The other side of the coin is that it is a pleasure when they are doing well! And despite all of the current challenges, the Northumberland Chess Association continues to thrive.
The evidence for this is obvious if you examine the results in two competitions. First, the local summer Knockout Cup Competition, for which there was a good entry. Playing the games online is not everyone’s cup of tea, but it didn’t deter the many keen players in our clubs from participating. It was set up well by Eddie Czestokowski and Jay Steel (both South Shields Chess Club) and has proceeded smoothly through two rounds. I have previously reported on the results of the games
B: White to play and mate in two moves
from these rounds and there follows details of two giant-killing acts. Thanks to Tim Wall of Forest Hall Chess Club for sending me the details and two diagrams of critical positions which I am using as puzzles C and D today.
The county teams also continue to do spectacularly well against challenging opposition. Thanks too to Mick Riding (Gosforth Chess Club), who is managing our teams brilliantly.
Tim Wall’s report – Thrills and spills in two chess ‘FA Cup’ matches:
In the first match, reigning Summer KO champions Forest Hall A were turfed out by their own D-team, after 14-year-old Weiming Xu, graded just 123, played a fantastic attacking game to defeat his own older brother, Zheming, graded 193 (70 points higher!).
Thanks to KO rules, the D-team just needed a single draw from four games to win the match.
Forest Hall’s E-team (a Division 3 team made up totally of schoolchildren), defeated mighty Morpeth A (one of the top Division 1 teams) after Ray Li, 13, of Jesmond (grade: 80), played a flawless Italian game and won the queen to defeat experienced county player Phil Eastlake (grade 148). That one point was enough to see the juniors through 4.5-3, after adding in their 3.5 handicap start.
Bear in mind, also, that while the match scores are handicapped, the lower-graded players receive no advantage on the clock.
Mick Riding’s report – Northumberland A v Surrey A in County Championship:
This was supposed to be a 12 board-match.
Surrey has traditionally put out strong teams in this tournament, and in this match they had grandmaster Bogdan Lalic on board one.
He played Gosforth junior James Moreby FM (FIDE master) in a game which James comfortably drew, an excellent result for James and the team.
The next seven boards yielded us another 5.5 points, with no losses!
Surrey, surprisingly, defaulted the bottom four boards, making the match score a brilliant 10-2 win for Northumberland.
Yes, there are challenges with playing online, but our players rose to the challenge and can be justifiably proud of their success. Another success is that our team included at least one player from almost every club in the league.