English Chess Forum

Excellent result for Wood Green MM3 thought wonder if the usual excellent juniors under-rated by 400 came into play.

Nice venue & good results for CSC Rhinos with 8 points & Hippos with 4 points (won 1 drew 1 this weekend). Oxford 2 look strong especially with Mike Healey on board 3 - as well as the rest of their players.

Highlights were the free tea and coffee on offer.

Excellent meal & team bonding at the hotel, & with others in the bar.

Quite a lot of torrential rain - was in the gym at 6.45 am & watching the golf professionals in waterproofs & lessons before the sun came up. A few using the swimming pool. Nice breakfast and company and views even with the rain.

Also the control team for finding opponent for someone who travelled up on Sunday morning to find out when he arrived of a 'default'.

Will there be full attendance for the Telford w/e especially as some of us have the traditional "Valentine's weekend" that is on the chess widow's calendar?

You can tell if Oxford 2 have a strong team out because I will be playing for Oxford 3!

Captain Tim has done a great job this season with Oxford 1 and that filters down to Oxford 2.

Nick Grey wrote:Excellent result for Wood Green MM3 thought wonder if the usual excellent juniors under-rated by 400 came into play.

Three of the players had ECF conversions, another is an adult, two of the six were wildcards due to withdrawals on Thursday & Friday. Two of the team came into the weekend on 0/2, another was on 0.5/3 and the team had 4.5 game points from 18 so the result came as a complete shock. Ironically, most of the players are unavailable for February so the team may not play again until March.

Seeing some of the other games going against the rating difference makes me feel just slightly better about my loss on the Sunday!

Am still annoyed though at losing as Black from this position:

1K6/1PP3PP/P1N2P2/8/8/3p4/pppn2pp/1k6 w - - 0 1

White to move. I thought White might have a slight advantage here, but thought it would be OK. Turned out not to be. Still not sure where I went wrong (well, I realised ten moves later that the position I had ended up in was one where my kingside pawn majority was stuck and weak, whereas his queenside pawn majority was mobile and strong, so that sort of explains it). Does anyone want to give their views on what the best strategy is for both sides here?

My guess is that you went wrong by exchanging the rooks off; the position would probably be slightly better for black with rooks still on the board.

Eep. That is too deep for me. Are you looking at the actual game score? Are you saying that I had control of the open file (I remember thinking that at some point), and shouldn't have swapped off the major pieces, but should have somehow tried to do something with that control? Or maybe I should have realigned down the c-file, and occupied d5 with a knight and done a minority attack on the queenside. That might be it.

Realigning down the c-file and doing a minority attack would probably have been my plan, but I don't know; I haven't seen the game score.

Christopher Kreuzer wrote: Still not sure where I went wrong

That structure with the distant Queen side pawn majority was considered advantageous in the days of Capablanca, so if you believe in that theory, then exchanging into the ending was incorrect. I'm still a bit surprised that Black cannot hold the ending. My immediate plan from the diagram would be to get the King somewhat closer to the Queenside pawn majority. After that, I would want to contrive ways to exchange some pawns, with the ultimate objective of reaching a draw by sacrificing the Knight for what was left.

IM Jack Rudd wrote:My guess is that you went wrong by exchanging the rooks off; the position would probably be slightly better for black with rooks still on the board.

It certainly seems that way when Keith Arkell is black

Four withdrawals for Week 3 (Rds 5/6)? I guess some are permanent for the season but a disappointing show from some clubs.

Neil Graham wrote:Four withdrawals for Week 3 (Rds 5/6)? I guess some are permanent for the season but a disappointing show from some clubs.

Ironically my "Midlands" teams had a lot of players unavailable for Telford but should be available for the remaining weekends at Wokefield Park

Could it be that this weekend, which co-insides with school half term in some areas, cause some absentees? I am losing one of my regular juniors for this very reason.

On another subject, is it just me that can't view them, or is there a problem with the pgn files for Div 3 & Div 4 south from week 2?
I keep getting an error 404 message whenever I try to access them.

Ian Wallis wrote: On another subject, is it just me that can't view them, or is there a problem with the pgn files for Div 3 & Div 4 south from week 2?

I don't think they've been loaded. I ran into the same problem when trying to research my potential opponents for Saturday and Sunday.

Roger de Coverly wrote:

Ian Wallis wrote: On another subject, is it just me that can't view them, or is there a problem with the pgn files for Div 3 & Div 4 south from week 2?

I don't think they've been loaded. I ran into the same problem when trying to research my potential opponents for Saturday and Sunday.

I understood that the person responsible for entering the games had gone to Gibraltar.

Neil Graham wrote:

Roger de Coverly wrote:

Ian Wallis wrote: On another subject, is it just me that can't view them, or is there a problem with the pgn files for Div 3 & Div 4 south from week 2?

I don't think they've been loaded. I ran into the same problem when trying to research my potential opponents for Saturday and Sunday.

I understood that the person responsible for entering the games had gone to Gibraltar.

I took possession of the Division 4 scoresheets last night and will input them next week. I stood down as game inputter for those divisions at the end of last season but am still happy to help out on an occasional basis after, but not during, the weekends.