2007-8

Matt considers the win

More photos below.

Summary

After an uncertain, and somewhat unlucky, start to the season, both teams started to find their way a bit better. A weakened Oxford 2 lost a close match on Saturday but an exciting tussle ended in their favour on Sunday to bring them to 50% after four rounds. Oxford 3 won bizarrely on the Saturday and Captain Bruce’s Arsenal-style League Cup policy proved well on the Sunday our junior squad, helped by Kevin (“The Finisher”) Henbest, who finished last in both games and provided the winning point each time, turned on the style.

Highlights

Star Performer	Ed Stembridge
The Finisher	Kevin Henbest
“And he's off...”	Matt Ludbrook (for getting off the mark)
Top Treatment given to	The French Defence
Dream of the Week	Dave Bruce
Book of the Weekend	Richard Palliser's Complete Chess Workout*
Best T-shirt	American football shirt, “Baudrillard No. 3” with the legend: “Power is only too happy to make football bear a facile responsibility, even to take upon itself the diabolical responsibility for stupefying the masses.” I wanted to take a picture of it, but its owner went and disappeared on the Sunday!

* ... which sells for a paltry £17.99 and features key combinative contributions from Mssrs Smallbone & Burt, and negative immortality for the likes of King, Riley, Terry and others. A real pleasure to read the work of friends and fellow sufferers. Where else would you find Jon Speelman share a page with Kelly Riley???

Great buy.

SATURDAY – 24 Nov 07

	OXFORD 2		2-4	ATHENAEUM
w	Starkie, Ray	2140	0 - 1	Spreeuw, Jaap	2276
b	Bruce, Dave	2109	½ - ½	Hopper, Paul	2166
w	Morris, Graham	2059	0 - 1	Wade, Robert G	2151
b	Stembridge, Ed	1993	1 - 0	McKeown, Paul	2095
w	Ludbrook, Matt	2046	0 - 1	Stevenson, James A B	2067
b	Jeffries, Majid	2012	½ - ½	Aniecko, Colin	1712

The 4NCL circus decamped to Wokefield Park near Reading for Division 4's second series of matches, and the troops arrived from far and wide to try and improve on our teams' performances on the first weekend. A series of accidents ensured that I arrived on time for the pick-up at the Angel & Greyhound at noon, leaving plenty of time for Dave's car to get lost en route to the golf centre, and still not be late for the preliminary exchanges. At 1.45pm the foyer of the De Vere hotel complex was awash with chess players just exuding traditional pre-match preparation, and if not all glistening with the prospect of fear, at least tremulous with anticipation. Some joined the queue to free coffee, others headed to Fritz their opponents. One other went to his room and lay down for a few minutes with his headache...

Oxford 2 were facing a strong Athenaeum side, outrated by 100 FIDE points on most boards except board 6, where Majid had the strong edge. The opening skirmishes went by unattended, as your eagle-eyed eyed correspondent had found the kettle in room 239 – nice view of the driving range, incidentally. By the time time allowed for a check on proceedings, things were looking ... tense, shall we say:

Ray, facing a master strength opponent had a restricted position with White, from an opening position not dissimilar to this:

An opening variation tried and tested in Starkie – Eckersley-Waites, on board 1 of the Oxford title decider last March, and which may well feature in the next issue of Disinformator. There, Ray had played his queen to b3 and after exchanging queens on b6 was hit by an avalanche of b-pawns. This time a more static game began to emerge, with Black enjoying perhaps a bit too much space for comfort.

Next to him, Dave Bruce had bashed out about 15 moves in the Winawer poisoned pawn variation, leaving his opponent short of time, but with a h-pawn to push; copious espressos later left him struggling with the clock, and a wrong view led to a drawn position.

Ed was involved in a grinding clash on Board 4, the result of some variation of the Queen's Indian which features either in World Championship matches or the lower divisions of the Oxford Chess leagues. Something in between was about to take off, and we were treated to a bit of the hardest grinding yakka for quite some time, which ended up in a position not unadjacent to this:

Where practically anything sensible wins for Black; those of you waiting for the flashy 45...Re5+ 46.Kd2 c3+ 47.Kd3 Rxe7 were to be disappointed, however. Ed doesn't do this stuff, right?!

Graham Morris was playing against the redoubtable RG Wade, and soon he had descended into that dread position where that weakened backward pawn on e1 turns out on closer examination to be a fairly weak bishop with the hapless task of defending all those pawns on black squares. Though Bob is not as young as he was when drawing against Fischer at Havana 1966 – an intricate 63-move battle given the treatment it deserves in the tribute book recently published – the task of converting this advantage was an easy one for the old master.

Matt Ludbrook's game was probably a closed Sicilian which seemed to be going reasonably well for a time, but with Matt going through what a Fr Ted character termed “the long night of the soul” (Series 3, Episode 8), he can't buy a 4NCL result at present, so a blunder accounted for a promising attack.

Majid Jeffries was promising something on bottom board, and playing a standard Sicilian he manages to surprise all and sundry with ...f7-f6 at a very early stage. He wins a piece but the pawn count is a bit low...

Things not going that well, then. Time to switch to the other side of the room.

	CELTIC TIGERS 2		2½-3½	OXFORD 3
w	Wagner, Guy	1818	0 - 1	Chen, Ti	1995
b	Kitchen, Peter J	1875	0 - 1	Hadi, Justin	1985
w	Larter, Nick	1780	1 - 0	Zhang, Marco	1925
b	Buttell, David	1755	0 - 1	Terry, Sean	1823
w	Kitchen, Michael J	1730	½ - ½	Henbest, Kevin B	1785
b	Bannon, Senan	1507	1 - 0	default

Oxford 3 haven't started that well either, since Heather Lang has cried off with a back injury and our board 6 is empty. On top board her chess-boxing partner, Ti Chen, is in good form and very soon has a commanding position which he converts efficiently; our match position improves even further when Justin Hadi hacks through his opponent in double-quick time:

The key position for the weekend is this unpretentious starting point in the Advance French, and the subject of much animated and erudite discussion over burgers and beer in the post-match bar, with Mssrs Hadi & Stembridge appearing for the White pieces, and Mr Bruce appearing for the French nation. Opening theory being a firmly closed book to the current writer, much of the finer points of piece positioning, the timing of exchanges and open lines were like so many horoscope predictions in the Sunday People, and therefore lost to posterity. Suffice it to say that the traditional posers - the timing of exchanges on d4, the playing of ...f6, and what business the black Bishop had going to d7 in various lines were giving an astrological airing. Your French secrets are safe with me, guys, but the general gist is that if you misplace your black-squared bishop, play ...f6 too early while exchanging thoughtlessly on d4, then you were quite likely to find Sagittarius in the ascendant and something coming quickly into conjunction with Uranus.

And so it transpired, as play continued: 4...Nc6 5.Nf3 Qb6 6.a3 f6 7.Bd3 cxd4 8.cxd4 Bd7 9.0–0 fxe5 10.dxe5 Bc5 Thus, translating the post–mortem back into some sort of chess vernacular, we see that Black is set for a right rogering, a judgement made all the easier by the consideration that White can now develop 11.Nc3 and threaten to win a piece (12.Na4). By as early as move 12, Fritz has given up the ghost on the position (+2.94) – and at the next diagram position:

White has the enviable choice between 14.Ne2, as played, and the equally enticing 14.Be3, which Dave Bruce favoured. Justin's preferred option allows a fairly easy to follow see–a–check route to victory so favoured by traditional commentators. In the final position he either wins a rook, or can opt for a mate in 5 if he prefers to make it to the next edition of Richard Palliser's Chess Workout series...

Hadi,Justin – Kitchen,P [C02] 4NCL4 Oxford (3), 24.11.2007

1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 4.c3 Nc6 5.Nf3 Qb6 6.a3 f6 7.Bd3 cxd4 8.cxd4 Bd7 9.0–0 fxe5 10.dxe5 Bc5 11.Nc3 Nd4 12.Nxd4 Bxd4 13.Qh5+ Kf8 14.Ne2 Be8 15.Qf3+ Ke7 16.Bg5+ Kd7 17.Nxd4 Qxd4 18.Bb5+ Kc8 19.Rac1+ Bc6 20.Qf8+ 1–0

So 2–1 ahead but not safe, particularly when Marco went adrift and got whacked by some prime tactics just after surviving the worst of time trouble. That left two games, both of which were looking good at some time – but with Kevin and Sean in charge of the pieces, can anyone be sure of what's happening?

Sean's started unpromisingly, both sides playing a respectful Sicilian – as if afraid to do anything quite so bold as to place a piece past the fourth rank. More Chinese Chess than Classical Dragon. Things did get to heat up, and at the expense of a pawn White was venturing to intrude on the Black position:

White needs to do something or generally watch his pawns fade away, so... 25.Nd5 Nxf3 26.Nxe7+ Kh8 27.gxf3 at which point I figured a win was on the cards – not to mention a position in the next Richard Palliser book. (Fritz comes up with 27... g5! = ish) 27...Bc4 28.Bxc4 Not bad, but not the best: 28.f6 is winning as if 28...Bxb3 29.fxg7+ Kxg7 when 30.Nf5+ (which I missed) wins the queen. Still, White is cruising, right – and maybe a position in Secrets of Spectacular Chess Miscalculations ?! 28...Rxc4 29.f6 Re8 30.b3 Rb4 31.Rc1? a relatively pointless move. With both sides a little short of time, the brain stops calculating concretely: here, the simple 31.fxg7+ Kxg7 32.Nd5 simply wins everything as the Rb4 can't leave the 4th rank (Qf6+ and Bd4) 32...Rxb6 33.Nf6 Qe7 34.Nxe8+ Qxe8 35.axb6 leaves Black a clear rook adrift. But White is still winning... ...and maybe even annotating it in Chess magazine?! 31...Rxb6 32.axb6 Qb5 and still White is winning (take on g7 and Nd5), but instead of which...

33.Rc7?? gifting the perpetual... ...f***ing hell, it's just more rubbish for Disinformator readers. 33...Qf1+ 34.Kh2 Qe2+ 35.Kg1 White can choose hari–kiri if he wants to avoid the perp: 35.Kg3 Qe1+ 36.Kg4 h5+ 37.Kg5 Qg1+ 38.Kf4 Bh6+ 39.Qg5 Bxg5# 35...Qxf3 and now Black, who has 8 seconds to reach move 40, goes astray. So I mix it with: 36.Nxg6+ fxg6 37.fxg7+ Kg8 38.e5!? dxe5?? 39.Qc4+ 1–0 As it happens, Black can at the last moment get to a superior ending, and time control, with 2 checks and a pawn capture: Qf3–d1–e2–xe5.

So, 3–2 to the lads, and with Kevin still pawns adrift it looks like match drawn. A shame, since earlier in the game, Kevin had treated the spectators to the complete range of notational symbolism: = ; =– ; = / – , and a few others for good measure before the ± appeared on the board and started inexorably to turn into + / –.

Black has managed to get some visual chances here, but the result can't be in doubt – can it? The Riley motif – ‘push the pawn’ – can't be so far away that it doesn't apply soon... instead play continued: 49.Kf2 Rh1 50.h4 Rh2+ 51.Ke3 Rh1 52.Kf2 Rh2+ 53.Ke3 Rh1 54.Kf2 Rh2+ 55.Ke1 Rh1+ 56.Kf2 at which point Kevin announced his intention of playing Rh2+ and claiming a draw. Oddly enough, Fritz when inputting the game announced the game drawn on move 54 – which goes to show that there's nothing harder than counting to three when playing chess...

Game drawn, match won. Beers, anyone?

SUNDAY – 25 Nov 07

	LITTLETHORPE 1		2½–3½	OXFORD 2
w	Byron, Alan M	2217	0 – 1	Rose, Matthew	2233
b	Mansson, James C	2161	1 – 0	Starkie, Ray	2140
w	Jones, Christopher M	2145	½ – ½	Morris, Graham	2059
b	Salisbury, Michael W	2137	0 – 1	Stembridge, Ed	1993
w	Gibson, Christopher A	2032	½ – ½	Chapman, Graham W	2040
b	Jaszkiwskyj, Peter	2005	½ – ½	Ludbrook, Matt	2046

Sunday dawned nicer than Saturday, a decent mild November day. Saturday morning I woke at 4.00am from a dream in which I was working in a cold cathedral and all that guff. Turned out the weather outside was a cool –6 centigrade, and the window was open.

Oxford 2 was strengthened by the presence of Matt Rose on top board, and Graham Chapman on 5, while three of the junior squad were on show, leaving Dave to spectate, and me to clear up my room. Both sets of opponents were evenly matched; and each game went to the wire.

The top team got off to a steady start, with quick and fairly easy draws on the bottom boards. Matt Ludbrook got off the mark with an uneventful OTB Lopez, which was more than redeemed by the post mortem which ranged far and wide – so much so that Dave's dream from the night before (“... I was having consensual sex... at which point I knew I was dreaming... “) seemed somehow relevant to the discussion of the position on the board. For the record, here's that position:

When we'd stopped laughing, we returned to find that Graham Chapman had agreed a draw in a Benko near–endgame against Chris Gibson where he was still a pawn to the bad, but presumably had some compensation that we hadn't thought of. This enabled an earlier exit to a week's work in Exeter.

Meanwhile Graham Morris's Sicilian was turning into a cautious exploration of weakness by his opponent as part of the process by which Graham gets to see if he can defend perfectly by playing 20 moves in 3 minutes. Having answered this in the affirmative, attention was turned to the top three boards, where a right old tussle was going on. Ray Starkey was struggling to find a way into the Black position with what looked like more 1. d4 d5; 2. Bf4 mullarkey, and a sharp battle around move 30 turned Black's way by the time control.

One down, two to go.

Ed Stembridge was in good form in the French advance, but by the diagram position honours are fairly even. White has more space, but Black has a secure enough position and offered a draw. Though he consulted with Dave, nobody doubted that Ed would turn down the opportunity to get the grinder to work, so...

23.f4 Ne8 24.Bg5 f6 25.Bxf6 Nxf6 26.exf6 Qf7 27.Qe3 Qxf6 28.Rbe1 Bd7 and Fritz thinks this is equals suggesting: 29.Be2 Rh4 30.Qe5 Qf5 31.c4 ... the players go their own way. 29.Qg3 g5 30.Re5 Qh6 31.Rxg5 Rhxg5 32.fxg5 Rxg5 and not 32...Qxg5?? 33.Rf8+

at which point Fritz thinks White is 0.6 to the good 33.Qf4 A nice move. White would like to play 33.Qd6 but ...Rg8 holds 33...Qg7? 34.Qd6! which should win quickly, but certainly wins a pawn. Black (like this writer) no doubt initially assumed that his threat of Rxg2+ prevented this sortie, but with mate now threatened after 35.Kh1 there are no checks that don't lose the now-stymied rook. 34...Be8 35.Qxe6+ Qd7 36.Bf5 good enough for an advantage but 36.Qe3 Rh5 (otherwise Bf5) 37.Rf8 wins a piece. The g–pawn is quite enough for Ed to win, however, and he completes the business in style.

Stembridge,Ed – Salisbury ,Michael [C02] 4NCL 4 Oxford (4), 25.11.2007

1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 4.c3 Nc6 5.Nf3 cxd4 6.cxd4 Bb4+ 7.Nc3 Bd7 8.Bd3 Qb6 9.a3 Bxc3+ 10.bxc3 Nge7 11.h4 h6 12.h5 0–0–0 13.Rb1 Qc7 14.Bf4 Na5 15.0–0 Nc4 16.Nd2 Nxd2 17.Qxd2 Bc6 18.Bh2 g6 19.Bf4 Rdg8 20.Bxh6 Nf5 21.Bg5 Rxh5 22.Bf6 Ng7 23.f4 Ne8 24.Bg5 f6 25.Bxf6 Nxf6 26.exf6 Qf7 27.Qe3 Qxf6 28.Rbe1 Bd7 29.Qg3 g5 30.Re5 Qh6 31.Rxg5 Rhxg5 32.fxg5 Rxg5 33.Qf4 Qg7 34.Qd6 Be8 35.Qxe6+ Qd7 36.Bf5 Qxe6 37.Bxe6+ Kc7 38.Rf5 Rg3 39.Rf8 Bc6 40.Rf3 Rg6 41.Bf7 Rg7 42.Be6 Kb6 43.g4 Ka5 44.Kf2 Ka4 45.Kg3 Kxa3 46.c4+ Kb4 47.cxd5 Be8 48.Rf8 Re7 49.Kf4 a5 50.Ke5 Bb5 51.d6 Rh7 52.Rf7 Rxf7 53.Bxf7 a4 54.g5 a3 55.g6 Be8 56.d7 Bxf7 57.gxf7 a2 58.f8Q+ Kb3 1–0

So all down to the highwire on board 1, then with Matt Rose playing the black bits:

Black's advantage consists of a passed pawn – and while the White king for the moment is set for a walk, the Black king seems nicely cosseted. But Black's cleric is slightly worse than its counterpart knight. White thought a long while before embarking on a king walk of his own...: 33.Kh3 Qxc1 34.Qe4 Qf1+ 35.Kg4 h5+ 36.Kg5 Bh6+ 37.Kf6 Qa6+ 38.Kf7 Bg7 ... which Fritz thinks is broadly equal. The crowd wasn't too sure – equal for whom? – and besides, with Oxford 3 on 5/8, it was high time that the top boys came to the party with a win! So we stayed on for the result... 39.Nf3 Qd6 40.Ng5+ Kh6

41.Ke8? According to my version of Fritz, 41.Qe8 wins ... for White! The main line goes like this: 41...Qd5+ 42.Ne6 d3 43.Kg8! – Tim Krabbe's steel king chapter comes to mind... – ...d2 44.f5 Qxf5 (44...gxf5 45.Qe7 mates or wins the queen) 45.Qd7 Qf6 46.Qxd2+ g5 47.Qd7 wins the bishop, as 47...Bh8 is answered by 48.Qh7#. All very beautiful. But now Black is back in the driving seat, and while the kibitzers quarrelled over move order, the rest was fairly easy: 41...Qf8+ 42.Kd7 Bf6 43.h4 d3! 44.Kc6 Qc8+ 45.Kd6 d2 46.Nf7+ Kg7 47.Qd5 Qf8+ 48.Kc6 Qa8+ 0-1

	OXFORD 3		3½–2½	NOTTINGHAMSHIRE 2
w	Chen, Ti	1995	½ – ½	de Mooi, CJ	2040
b	Hadi, Justin	1985	0 – 1	Thompson, Brian	1943
w	Levicki, Jeffrey	1895	1 – 0	Taylor, Robert P	1990
b	Harvey, Marcus R	1810	0 – 1	Graham, Neil	1895
w	Henbest, Kevin B	1785	1 – 0	Hill, Maurice J	1950
b	Foster, James M	1770	1 – 0	Myers, Richard	1845

Brisk moves for the Oxford 3 match, as you'd expect with three juniors – no slouches here – and all acquitted themselves well, with a battling win on Board 6 by James Foster, surviving an all–board piece fest to emerge an exchange up and win in a style I missed.

Note to juniors: if you want your name in www copy immortality, wait for the old man with the pencil in hand to take down your position.

Dave reports that our loss on Board 4, which ended with a Q + n pawns versus bare king, was a much closer affair from the opening – a little inexperience saw Marcus Harvey choose the wrong ending (or was it, “the ending, wrongly”?)

So, all square with 4 to play, and Jeffrey Levicki had a corker of a position, but 2½ minutes to reach time control at move 26:

With his opponent having 30 minutes to spare and not much to do with the position except think, Jeffrey needed to play sharpish, and sit on his... bum – but the sitting time was well worth the result, as White closed out with about a minute to spare: 27.Nxf5+ Ke8 28.Qxb6 axb6 29.Nd6+ Kf8 30.Rf2 Re7 31.Rdf1 Rdd7 32.b4 Nc7 33.Rf5 Nd5 34.R1f3 Re6 35.Nxf7 Rg6+ 36.Kf2 Kg7 37.Nd6 Re6 38.Rg3+ Kh7 39.Nf7 Rg6 40.e6 1–0

This win left us all square with two to play as Justin got slowly overhauled by a morass of rooks on the e–file and a well–played attack, while it all came down to the wire once again when Ti Chen agreed a draw around time control – which might have been drawn an hour or so earlier.

Which left us where we'd been the previous evening: Kevin Henbest needing a result to secure ... a result. This time we were more confident – our man was in the box seat with a pair of passed pawns, and no prospect of a three–fold repetition, but an early resignation – both pawns were only connected on the fifth, after all – deprived this reporter of a view of the carnage ... except this picture:

As Barry Davies might have put it: “just look at those pawns! .... Just look at those pawns!!!”