Author: Andrew Varney

If someone had told me, before the tournament, that having a heart surgeon among the England entourage would be important for the girls’ performance, I probably would have laughed. But it may have made the difference between a win and a loss today for Zoe. Let me explain.

I mentioned in an earlier blog entry that Zoe and Liza had a late-night swim after round 1. What I did not mention was that Zoe claimed to have stepped on something sharp and that there was something crab-like “grabbing hold of her” when she was in the water. As her dad, I dismissed this simply as Zoe’s very active imagination. When, later, her foot swelled up slightly and became painful, I assumed that this was due to an allergic reaction to a mosquito bite.

Follow the link to see what it really was.

Anyone coming to Kavala would be advised to read and heed this advice.

Zoe’s foot was getting increasingly painful to the point where she could not walk on it and it would have distracted her from her chess. So something had to be done about it.

This is where the Magic cure comes in. We were very grateful for the presence of Ping Yang, one of the chess parents, who is a skilled micro-surgeon. Her skills were ideal for extracting the broken piece of spine from Zoe’s foot (and, indeed, from the foot of one of the England coaches who was suffering in the same way).

Zoe was now able to concentrate on the game and produce a solid win as Black. While Marianne and Liza did not face the same physical pain, they had quite painful losses over the board. Hopefully they will both be recovered emotionally for round 4.

The tournament received more entrants than was anticipated, so has been split over two venues.

The sections that involve the Cumnor and Witney girls (U13 girls and U15 girls) are held in the more picturesque of the two, the local archaeological museum.

In the first round all 3 girls played in a rather stuffy room on the first floor, but for the second round Zoe was playing in the main area, while the U13s and lower U15 boards were moved to an airier upstairs mezzanine.

The three Oxfordshire chess parents have been running a rota system to wait outside the venue for our children to finish. Today the rota for the first 3 shifts was Andrew, Elena and Bram. The players finished in the same order as in round 1, but the gap between them was quite different.

Liza was first at around 6:15pm, just on the swap over between the second and third shifts. She had unleashed the power of the Grand Prix Attack on her opponent, who spent an hour pondering her response to a key attacking move. A good win!

Next to emerge was Marianne, at some time after 7pm, with her first points of the tournament. She was very pleased to have drawn, although this was tempered a little when she discovered that she could have won.

Marianne was pleased to get away from the venue, however. While the playing conditions were much better, she found the presence of a poster next to her table referencing Nazi war atrocities quite off-putting during the game.

That was the third shift over, and Andrew was left to wait for Zoe in the fourth and final shift.

As the sun went down and the mosquitoes came out, so did many of the players. The first time control came and went. But Zoe and her opponent were still in deep concentration.

Waiting for a further two hours for the game to finish – this is the loneliness of the long-distance chess parent!

To be honest, it was not all alone; David Shepherd, 16-year-old Katherine’s dad is far more used to this than I am and was indeed there even after Zoe and I left in the middle of a thunderstorm to get back before the dinner hall closed at 10pm.

After going through the (unfortunately lost) game with her coach, it was time for Zoe to go straight to bed.

Yes, the Varneys and Sheremetyevas did travel with BA to get here, but that’s not what I’m referring to.

Yesterday (17th June) the girls received their England shirts and badges after the introductory team meeting and it was time to bring the England flags and balloons out.

Here it is appropriate to mention the official ECF website link and England juniors Twitter feed for the tournament. There’s a particularly relevant photo of Zoe, Elizaveta and Marianne getting to grips with a St George (flag, not opening) together with their team mate, Asha Jina.

England team relaxed before Round 1 pic.twitter.com/HUqevqeNBp

— England Juniors ESCC (@ECFESCC2014) June 18, 2014

Zoe had predicted that she would be playing Marianne in the first round because they were the only two unrated players in the U15 girls section and it appeared to be the way things were done previously. Fortunately, however, that was not the case.

When the draw was finally published at around 12:30, we saw that Marianne had Black against the 5th seed while Zoe was White against the 6th seed.

In the U13 girls section, Liza was in the top half of the draw, so facing a lower-rated opponent. With lunch, a team meeting and photos to fit in between getting onto the website with the draw and setting off for the venue for the first time, that left almost no time to prepare against the individual opponents.

Liza was first to finish, and was quite upset to have lost to a lower-rated player, only really cheering up after a late-night trip to the beach with Zoe.

Marianne followed soon after, around the 3 hour mark, having lost due to a miscalculated combination.

It was literally just a few minutes later still that Zoe came out of the venue with a big grin. In the words of her coach, quoted on the ECF website report (see link above) she “generated a sparkling attack that culminated in a win of her opponent’s Queen.”

The first round starts today at 4pm local time, which is 2 hours ahead of UK time.

Preparation until today for Zoe has mostly been simply settling in to the new environment and resting.

Zoe and Elizaveta (Liza) travelled together to Kavala on Sunday 15th which has given us all a day to recover and relax.

This was a good idea, since an earlyish flight meant a 3am start and we had to wait over 2 hours for the transfer from the airport (which itself was a 2 hour journey).

Meanwhile, Marianne, travelling a day later ‘only’ had a 4:30 am start with an uneventful flight to Thessaloniki Airport. However, there was a mix-up over the arrival time which meant they missed the taxi, but two hours later they were on a bus with a large Russian contingent.

The hotel is close enough to the venue, the food more than palatable (excellent breakfast!) and the sea nice and warm, although a 15-minute walk away to the beach.

Today things stepped up a gear, though, when Zoe met with her coach for the first time. We will not see the first-round draw until 12 noon, so it was simply a time to get introduced and to look a few moves deeper in one of the openings that Zoe already plays. Liza shares the same coach as Zoe, so it is not surprising that the format was the same, but Marianne’s was also similar, just enough to get the “chess brain working”.

Zoe Varney is playing in the U15 girls section of the European Schools Chess Championships over the next two weeks here in Kavala, Greece. It is the first time she has played for England and she is very excited and nervous.

I intend to blog on her progress regularly, and probably also for Marianne Hauer and Elizaveta Sheremetyeva from Witney Chess Club. Having three Oxfordshire girls playing for England in this tournament is a great achievement.