Surbiton Chess Club News Letter - Sept/Oct 2009
Welcome to a new season!
The season kicked off with the Thames Valley North v Thames Valley South match, which was drawn, but Surbiton became trophy holders by virtue of the greatest number of winners.
Mark Josse and Nick Pelling both won convincingly. Nick demonstrated he has not lost the midas touch with a sparkling win on board 1 which has been published in the latest British Chess Magazine.
Our AGM was held at the end of September and the significant points were that the Fircroft Trust are very happy for us to continue to meet at their premises and as a result the subscription remains at just £32 a year, £16.00 a year for juniors and those unwaged and not pensioned. Please pay your subs promptly as we need to send them a donation and pay all the league fees shortly.
Heiko Cassens and Nick Pelling were joint winners of the Val Norman Trophy for the best percentage score in matches for the club.
Thank you to the members in the club who found my "deliberate" mistakes in the fixtures for the coming season. The away match v Wimbledon on the 26th October is a Surrey Trophy match NOT Thames Valley and the B team is NOT going away to Maidenhead on March 8th but is instead playing Maidenhead home on March 10th.
The first match of the season was an Ellery Williams match v Dorking which was not without incident. When I declared the team we discovered that Chris Torrero had a grade of 143 which made him ineligible to play as his grade had to be under 141. Fortunately nobody including Chris and the Dorking captain believed this was an accurate grade and he was allowed to play. Chris immediately demonstrated that his grade was indeed inaccurate as he produced a brilliant game that a 170 player would be proud of!! His opponent played f5 in reply to Chris's e4 and the game transposed into an advanced French. He reached a critical position which I was familiar with and I always wondered "what the hell does White do now?". Chris came up with a simple idea and played Nh4 with the one move threat of Qh5check. His opponent countered with g6 but the real joy of Nh4 was that it seemed a logical plan for black to follow up with Be7 hitting the knight and gaining a tempo for blacks coming kingside pawn advance. The disadvantage of Be7 is that it left no squares for blacks kings knight and kings rook to develop!! Chris took advantage and duffed his opponent up on the Queenside!
On Weds 7th we played Kingston in the Thames Valley knockout. Chris, Nick and Stef drew on boards 1, 2, & 3. Paul Shepherd played Julian Way on board 4 and his demolition of Julian was so complete it deserved 2 points instead of 1!!
On bottom board Rob Harrison came a pawn up against Chris Clegg but it appeared that the most likely outcome would be Rob would get mated. However it appears Houdini is Rob's middle name and he managed to exchange down to a drawn position. That just left me playing Roche - I had played an uncharacteristic positional game where I had an early advantage - I felt the game was turning against me and with a quick play finish looming (my quickplay grade is 126!!) I offered a draw which was accepted. We won 3.5 - 2.5.
Our Club president Michael Basman IM gave an excellent interview to Chess magazine which everyone should read. There is a copy of the magazine at our Club.
Paul Durrant - 9th October 2009
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