Tag: Chess

A great result for Cumnor Chess Club [Match report]

Cumnor 1 kicked off its season in style last night, beating Wantage 1 an impressive 6-0.

Cumnor 1 Wantage 1
1 Glenn, Liam (157) 1-0 Piggott, Roly (151)
2 Varney, Daniel (151) 1-0 Hemmings, Peter (149)
3 Stevens, Gareth (146) 1-0 Spalding, George H (115)
4 Sayers, Mark (143) 1-0 Booker, Julian (103)
5 Carr, Robin (125) 1-0 Mills, Matt (90)
6 Cluley, Graham (116) 1-0 Cordon, Ray (83)
Match played on 8 Oct 2015. 6-0

First to finish, in an impressively rapid 15 minutes or so (and just 12 moves) was Cumnor’s Daniel Varney, playing white against Peter Hemmings.

Here’s the board just before Daniel played the move that forced Peter to resign. Can you see the two different ways that White can force checkmate in two moves?

Daniel Varney vs Peter Hemmings

If you said Bf7+, congratulations. Depending on where the Black king moves to, White can finish the game with Bh6++ or Qe6++.

Well done Daniel!

The rest of the games took a lot longer than that, and in later analysis at The Bear and Ragged Staff demonstrated it became clear that the 6-0 result didn’t tell the whole story, and that in fact Wantage 1 had not only put up a tough fight, but was also seemingly winning on a number of boards.

However, temporarily at least, Cumnor is leading Division 2. Now the only challenge is… how can we stay there?

What is your favorite chess quote?

Quotes about Chess have been around since the game was conceived about 1500 years ago.

Here in Cumnor we do like our quotes and even have quotes on rotation but I think we need a few more.

So what is your favorite quote? Is it humorous? Or clever? Or inspiring?

Let us know in the comments or on Facebook or Twitter.

Just to give you a few idea’s here are ours:
slide-sun-tzu-battle-won-before-fought-001-450x200
Gareth’s favourite is
“Pawns are the soul of chess”
François-André Danican Philidor

My favourite is:
“The pin is mightier than the sword.”
Fred Reinfeld

Cumnor Chess Club players in the news as chess boot camp comes to Oxford

Cumnor Chess Club wouldn’t be the same without the Varneys.

Andrew Varney, and son and daughter Daniel and Zoe, have become regular strong members of the Cumnor 1 team, and Zoe recently confidently secured herself the highest grade in the club – with an impressive 171 ECF.

Daniel and Zoe have, of course, benefited over the years from their father’s keen love for chess, and his skilled coaching.

As the Oxford Mail reports, this week Andrew was involved in a two-day chess boot camp at Oxford Spires Academy, training 17 promising young chess players aged 9-15, ahead of a tournament on Thursday.

Oxford Mail report

The Oxford Mail reports that the participants will definitely find the training useful in improving their chess playing:

Mr Varney said students had an intensive look at a particular game, adding: “It will definitely be beneficial to them longer-term.

“My experience from my own kids and people I coach is that if you have a more intensive look at things, you see a change pretty much straight away.”

Andrew Varney is an ECF-accredited chess coach and can be reached on 07786 321095, or via email at AV.chess@outlook.com

A most peculiar chess opening

You certainly don’t see openings like this regularly, particularly not at a high level.

Chess opening

Yes, your eyes didn’t deceive you.

1. Ng3 Ng6
2. Rg1!?!?!?

All, I can say is “Gosh”.

This unorthodox opening was played by 15-year-old grandmaster Aravindh Chithambaram of India, in a match against South African FM Nicholas van der Nat in the last round of the recently concluded Commonwealth Chess Championship.

The obvious question, of course, is what happened next?

Thankfully Chessbase has the answer:

The bewildered South African sank into a thirty-minute think and replied 2 …d6, but lost the game anyway. Speaks tons about his opponent though, who played an outrageous idea in the second move of the game and proceeded to win it.

Check out the full story, and find out how the game progressed, on the Chessbase website.

Cumnor’s inaugural cold turkey chess tournament

Cumnor Chess Club might be closed for August, but that isn’t stopping some of our players from getting their fix.

Last night, Cumnor saw its first ever “Cold Turkey Chess Tournament”, where four Cumnor Chess Club regulars were driven by their withdrawal symptoms to get together at one of their homes, and have a mini-tournament.

Everyone played each other twice, with 15 minutes on each clock.

Cumnor Cold Turkey chess players

Play commenced in the back garden, with Liam Glenn taking an early lead ahead of Gareth Stevens, Richard Slade and Graham Cluley.

But man cannot live by chess alone. Fortunately, Mrs Cluley provided copious amounts of food (chicken curry, rather than cold turkey) and some beer may have been consumed while there was a lengthy discussion about James Bond movies and the revelation (to some of us) that dinosaurs had feathers.

Recommencing play, Liam’s lead became unassailable – losing only a single game (to Graham in the final round).

For the benefit of historians, we recorded the match results (but not the moves) on a high tech electronic scoreboard.

Electronic score board

Well done Liam.

Next week we plan to meet again for another cold turkey tournament. Let us know if you’re having withdrawals from Cumnor Chess Club too, and maybe you can come along? Alternatively, see you back in the club in September!

The Club is now Closed (But don’t worry it’s only for August!)

The club is now closed throughout August and will reopen on the first Thursday in September, which is the 3rd of September. The Oxfordshire Leagues then restart in October 2015 with Cumnor 1 in div 2 and Cumnor 2 in div 4.

Have a great summer!

Fixture’s are released

Large Blog ImageThe draft fixtures have now been released for the 2015-16 season.

Check them out here.

It looks like a difficult start for the first team with 3 away games in November, including a long trip to Banbury.

Cumnor 2 will face Didcot 3 (the new team) on the 28th October.

The Frank Wood Shield will start in the New Year.

Obviously, the fixtures are subject to change.

A modern immortal chess game

Perhaps non-players don’t always believe us, but most chess fans would find it hard to deny that Chess is a beautiful game.

Although games can last for hours, and it can feel – to those who aren’t gripped by a position’s nuances – that it would be more entertaining to watch paint dry, there is often more drama and action on a chess board than you would ever see on a football field.

Although every game starts the same way – 16 pieces versus 16 pieces, all in their traditional starting positions – the virtually limitless possibilities mean that we never quite know what we’re going to get.

Immortal Game, 1851But I can tell you what we want to see. We want to see an Immortal Game.

The first chess match to receive the title of “The Immortal Game” was played in London, in June 1851, between Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky. And it’s hard to think of a chess game more exciting – with bold, dramatic sacrifices leading to a stunning checkmate.

You can view the game (via a rather nifty animated GIF) to the right of this article.

Brilliant.

And earlier this month, a brand new chess game was touted as an “Immortal Game”, and perhaps one of the greatest games of the 21st century.

The stunning game was played by 16-year-old chess phenomenon Wei Yi versus Cuba’s Lazaro Bruzon Bautista at a recent tournament.

And like Adolf Anderssen, Wei Yei proves he has no problem making dramatic sacrifices to gain an advantage and lead his opponent’s king into a mating trap.

As “Ginger GM” Simon Williams explains in the following video, what’s impressive is not just that White saw the rook sacrifice on F7 (which probably many would have viewed as an interesting line), but that Wei Yei appears to have pieced together the rest of the jigsaw and seen that a checkmate was up for grabs umpteen moves later.

Is it right to call the Wui Yei / Lazaro Bruzon Bautista a classic “immortal” game? I don’t know. But it’s darn impressive, and beautiful to watch.