Calling all Oxon junior chess players! The annual junior county trials and championship are taking place over the weekend of 7th/8th January 2023 at Cumnor Primary School.
The U9 competition is on Saturday 7th January, U11 on Sunday 8th January and U13/15/18 on both 7th and 8th January. This is a closed competition, with only Oxfordshire children eligible to enter.
For the U9/11 sections, this means children living and/or attending school in Oxfordshire. For the U13/15/18 section, this means children affiliated to Oxfordshire by any of birth, residence, school / college or attendance at an Oxfordshire chess club.
Full details can be found via the entry form. We look forward to welcoming you.
Please email oxfordshirejuniorchess@gmail.com for any queries.
Oxfordshire is blessed at the moment with a rich crop of talented juniors. Many of you will know that two of them, Jan Murawski and Kenneth Hobson, won their respective sections in the British Junior Chess Championships, and Kenneth was in action again recently at the Frome Congress, held at Selwood Academy. He was joined by Dimitrios Zakarian and Alex Hertog, all playing in the highest rated Open section, an excellent illustration of the strength of junior chess in the county at the moment
All had good individual results, Kenneth and Dimitrios both finishing on 3.5/5 and winning grading prizes , and Alex playing well above his rating to finish on 1.5. Further it was proposed that a team to represent Oxfordshire was formed, but more about that later … First all three have been kind enough to send me what they think is their best game, so let’s have a look:
Kenneth Hobson
Kenneth chose his second round victory against Allan Pleasants
Kenneth nowadays is a much better player than I, so I’ll leave you with his comments, save to say that as a Pirc/Modern player I agree 8… c6 is not a good decision, 8… c5 screams out to be played, and that the tactics at the end are very pretty; sacrifices on empty squares are often difficult to see, and line closing ideas doubly so.
Dimitrios Zakarian
Dimitirios also provided some analysis for his round 4 game against John Waterfield, and talking of tactics move 27 is a stunner!
Obviously the son has inherited something from the father … The sacrifice leaves white’s minor pieces miserably bottled up in the corner and the lone rook is totally ineffective against Black’s Queen and Knight. The computer confirms it all as sound, one pretty line with distant echoes of Kenneth’s idea above:
Superb stuff! It’s one thing to see these things, but it it takes confidence (of youth?) to play them.
Alex Hertog
Alex chose his 2nd round draw against George Hollands as his best game. Outrated by around 150 points Alex nevertheless almost grinds out a long positional win in a very mature game:
I’m usually on the white side of these structures, and if I can get a knight into d6 I am normally very happy. However Alex nicely defuses it here, and in the process wins a pawn to go into a Rook + 3 pawn against R + 2 ending. Now to me this looks very difficult to win, but on the plus side there are only 2 possible results; white is in for a long and miserable defence. The key to winning is to somehow eventually get the king in front of the pawns aiming for the Lucena position, while avoiding black’s main drawing possibility, the Philidor position. Easily said, very difficult to achieve here with the white pawns connected and on the same files as Blacks, and a well placed White king. Alex slowly and patiently makes progress but in the end white manages to set up essentially the Philidor drawing method – to be honest I suspect with best play the ending was drawn from the start, but Alex made a fine stab at it.
Dimitrios in action
So three juniors in the Open, all doing pretty well. As a result after round 3 it was suggested that an Oxfordshire team was put together, which required a fourth player. So which shining star of Oxford youth chess could they chose?
Dazed and Confused
Yes, weighing in at over 55 years and more than 50% the age of the other 3 players combined it was me! I was playing in the Major, restricted to players rated under 1950, and was doing pretty well. I ended on 3.5/5, enough for a share of third.
My best game was probably round 1, but that was a Benoni and I’ve shown a lot of them recently. So here is my round 4 effort:
Pretty, but my opponent was the architect of his own (k)nightmare with 15… Qe7. That said I was pleased with getting the tactics around 13 exd6 right (threat dxe7), and Kb1 to kill off counter play is the kind of move I easily miss.
Me in the fourth round, looking elegant as ever
So the weekend resulted in good performances all round, and prizes for 3 of us, not a bad haul at all! So what did that mean for the team? Well … unfortunately it was decided we tried to enter the team too late, so my career as an Oxfordshire Junior was cut cruelly short :( To add insult to injury part of the reason for the rejection was that we were doing too well individually to enter a team that late!
Thus a good weekend for Oxfordshire chess at an enjoyable and well run congress – if you can get to Frome next year I strongly recommend it. I’ve been going since 2018, and I really feel I ought to mention in previous years I went with Ian Brooke, a stalwart of Oxford Chess that we sadly lost earlier this year. I am sure he would be overjoyed to see such young talents doing so well in such a tough competition.
Ian Brooke playing at Frome in 2019
Many thanks to Brendan O’Gorman and Chris Lamming for permission to use their photographs; follow the links for more of their excellent photos of the congress.
Monday 8 April – Thursday 11 April
Oxford New Generation chess & activity holiday club.
The February half term club was fully booked some time beforehand. The holiday club ethos is to keep groups small to allow quality coaching time, so it is recommended people book early to avoid disappointment. Please contact Yanling Cheng or Andrew Varney.
Thursday 11 April
St. Giles’ Church Junior Chess Club Under 12 tournament
It is intended that this will be an ECF graded Rapid Play tournament. Exact details to be clarified. Please contact Rod Nixon.
Saturday 13 April
Delancey UK Chess Challenge Oxon Last Chance Saloon
This is a 7-round Rapid Play (ungraded) open to all juniors who have not yet qualified for the Megafinal stage of the UK Chess Challenge competition. There will be an ECF graded Rapid Play running alongside it open to junior ECF members. Please contact Andrew Varney.
Andrew can be reached
AV.chess@outlook.com
01865 460279
