Hebden Bridge Chess Club

A light in the darkness: This brilliant photo was sourced from gleasonmj's Flickr photostream

The Belgrave Club in Halifax was the scene for the traditional curtain closer on the Calderdale Chess League season as players gathered for the annual Team Lightning Competition. Those readers who are uninitiated in this fun and frenetic format should have a quick look at my post on last year’s competition which was won by Hebden Bridge ‘A’.

Hebden were probably one of the pre-tournament favourites for this year’s competition too but, on the night, they found that the strength of their own line up and the club’s representation in general was somewhat under par. Only 8 Hebden Bridge players made it to the event when last year the club fielded 3 teams of 5! This meant that, once the first team line-up had been confirmed, Danny Crampton, Terry Sullivan and Ray Deraverere had to be loaned out to other clubs who were lacking full line-ups.

As it transpired there were only 7 teams entered in total so the turn out was generally a little disappointing. However, on the plus side, several teams had taken the competition seriously enough to put out very strong line ups and that ensured the action was extremely competitive. Todmorden ‘A’ for example, arrived with most of their regular (and very strong) line up from the League 1 campaign which saw them pipped at the post by Hebden Bridge in the very last match of the season.

Halifax were bolstered by the return of Darwin Ursal to board 1 following his season long ‘loan’ to Hebden and they also fielded Will Somerset on board 2. Both these two are graded over 180! Huddersfield had also arrived with a strong side led by another +175 graded player, Mitchell Burke. Finally, Hebden Bridge themselves had covered for Darwin’s departure by drafting in yet another super-strong player of their own, Matthew Webb.

Unfortunately for Hebden, without Matthew Parsons on board 2 and Pete Leonard on board 3, they were weaker down the order than they would ideally have liked. Nevertheless, in such illustrious company they performed creditably and came pretty close to defending the title they have held for the last two seasons.

The critical round of the tournament for Hebden Bridge on the night was round 5. Having squeezed a close 3-2 win against the old foe Huddersfield in round 1 and lost by a similarly tight scoreline against Halifax in round 2, Hebden had launched themselves right back into the competition by scoring 4½ against Belgrave and a perfect 5 against Todmorden ‘B’. In round 5 they lined up against the leaders Todmorden ‘A’ who were merely a point ahead them. If they could beat the strongest team in the competition then they had a chance to lift the title once again.

The match started badly when Dave Shapland got mauled on the Black side of a King’s Gambit essayed by Pete Mulleady. Then things started to look up. On board 5 Martin Syrett put away Chris Edwards and on board 1 Matthew Webb demonstrated great technique in the endgame by grinding out a win against Martin Hamer. Hebden were a point up with two to play and on board 3 Nick Sykes seemed to have at least a draw in hand against Alastair Wright.

Then it all went pear-shaped. On board 4 Josh Blinkhorn managed to secure a winning advantage in a complex rook and pawn ending against Neil Suttie. However, when you only have 10 seconds to think about each move blundering away a winning advantage is always a possibility and sadly, on this occasion, Josh wias the victim, rather than the perpetrator, of a swindle. This left the scores level, and Nick Sykes now had to press for a win in a position that didn’t merit such aggression. Gamely he tried but it backfired and Alastair was able to win to secure a 3-2 win for Todmorden.

In the final round Hebden defeated Brighouse 4-1 to finish with 20 game points. This was enough to see them finish half a point ahead of Huddersfield and level on points with Halifax. Todmorden were the winners with 23 points. Here are the full scores for all the teams:

Todmorden ‘A’ – 23
Halifax – 20
Hebden Bridge – 20
Huddersfield – 19½
Belgrave – 16½
Brighouse – 13½
Todmorden ‘B’ – 8½

Congratulations to Todmorden for their excellent team performance. They won every match they played and were not recipients of a 5-0 bye as many other teams were.

The individual medals were awarded as follows:

Board 1: Darwin Ursal (Halifax) – 6 points
Board 2: Peter Mulleady (Todmorden ‘A’) – 6
Board 3: Alastair Wright (Todmorden ‘A’) – 5
Board 4: Neil Suttie (Todmorden ‘A’) – 6
Board 5: Martin Syrett (Hebden Bridge) – 5½

Special mention should be made of both Martin Syrett’s excellent display and also of yet another magnificent performance from Darwin Ursal who tore colossally strong opposition limb from limb as he dispatched, Mitchell Burke, Matthew Webb and Martin Hamer (!) on his way to a perfect score.

With strength like this being displayed by the clubs for the team lightning, the future prospects for 2012-13 league season must be very bright indeed!

This race was even closer! A photo finish record of the first triple dead heat in harness racing: Patchover, Payne Hall and Penny Maid at Freehold Raceway (USA). Image sourced from Wikipedia

If there has ever been a closer finish in Calderdale Evening Chess League history then I hope someone can tell me about it! Hebden Bridge ‘A’, Todmorden ‘A’ and Huddersfield all finished within a point of each other as the season drew to a close this week.

On Monday night Hebden Bridge ‘A’ travelled to face Courier ‘A’ at the Belgrave club in Halifax. Also in action at the same venue against Belgrave were the reigning champions Huddersfield ‘A’ who still had a slim chance of retaining their title if Hebden Bridge lost and Todmorden failed to win. Mischievously, Huddersfield’s Captain, Robert Sutcliffe, had brought the league trophy with him expecting to hand it over to his Hebden Bridge counterpart at the end of the night. If only his counterpart had been so confident of success!

Hebden fielded their regular line up which has been strong enough to carry them through most of this season’s trials and tribulations. The question was, would they be able to over come the jitters that had affected their performance in the previous two matches? It took a while before any of the games began to crystalise into likely outcomes.

First to finish (unusually so this season) was Nick Sykes on board 5. He met Guy Thompson’s Colle System with solid, sensible development and challenged for the centre in a timely fashion. Then he made a tactical error and lost a pawn. For a little while it seemed that Black was in trouble but Nick played carefully and Guy was unable to make progress. Eventually, the pieces started to come off, Nick regained his pawn deficit and the players agreed to a draw.

Not long after that Hebden took a big step towards the title as Matthew Parsons forced Dave Patrick’s resignation. Once again Matthew’s weapon of choice was the Sniper, once again the game seemed murky and hard to understand, once again White seemed to have a decent position only to leave his forces uncoordinated and yet again Matthew finished his opponent in clinical style. The game is most instructive and can be followed in the viewer at the end of this post. Hebden were in front and needed a point and half from the last three games to secure the title.

That was when it all started to go wrong. Pete Leonard and Dave Shapland have both hit terrible form in perfect synchrony this season (they have scored 1 point between them across the last four rounds of the title race!) and there was always a chance that they would be unable to recover even though they were both outwardly confident.

Dave’s game against Dave Colledge on board 4 went astray quite early when he misplayed the move order of a complicated Semi-Slav Botvinnik variation and dropped a piece. As you’ll see in the note to his game below he could have refuted his opponent’s idea immediately but it was hard to spot. Despite this the position remained very difficult to assess and much careful calculation was needed by both players. Sadly, Mr Colledge was on top form and successfully navigated his way through a maze of hazards to get to an endgame where he had and extra bishop. Shapland forced him to play out the ending with commendable tenacity but Colledge saw the job to a close at the end of the evening.

Pete on the other hand seemed to fair well in the opening against Robert’s interesting opening choice – a Torre Attack. Then he lost his barings in the middle game and, in an unbalanced position Robert had the better of the affair. In the end Pete was down pawns and Robert had two bishops against Pete’s single rook. It was a hopeless cause and suddenly Courier were a point up with just one game to finish.

How fortunate that Hebden had this year’s hero, Darwin Ursal at the helm of this last game. John Morgan is a redoubtable opponent, especially with the White pieces, but Darwin has been unstoppable and he successfully conjured up complications in the endgame. This, compounded by John’s habitual zeintot was enough for Darwin to secure a last gasp win and Hebden had escaped with yet another draw, their fifth of the season.

Hebden ‘A’s  final match score card of the season looked like this:

Courier ‘A’  vs. Hebden Bridge ‘A’
J.Morgan 0 - 1 D.Ursal
D.Patrick 0 – 1 M.Parsons
R.Clegg 1 – 0 P.Leonard
D.Colledge 1 – 0 D.Shapland
G.Thompson ½ – ½ N.Sykes
2½ - 2½

I should add at this point that, like the true champions they have been, Huddersfield fought right to the end and inflicted a hefty 1 – 4 defeat on Belgrave to ensure that they did the very best they could to put pressure on both of the teams above them.

Right back at the beginning of the season, when Hebden travelled to Todmorden for the first round, I rhetorically asked whether that drawn match could be considered to be a point won or a point lost. I concluded that it would depend on how the rest of the season panned out. How true that prophecy turned out to be. If Hebden were to lose the title at the last gasp it would surely be because they had drawn too many matches despite losing only one.

So now all eyes were on Todmorden’s trip to Huddersfield ‘B’ on Thursday night. Of course they knew exactly what they had to do, only a total whitewash would give them enough to lift the title by one half point in the “game score” column. That would surely put every player in their team under greater pressure. No team had managed a 5-0 result all season. Could Todmorden over turn the odds and be the first at the last?

Andrew Clarkeson kindly sent us this report on Thursday night’s dramatic events:

The four East Lancs mercenaries drove over to Huddersfield knowing exactly what was required of them…..win…..on EVERY board. On the way we discussed our possible opponents and game strategy; take no risks, accumulate small advantages, pounce and exploit any weaknesses, but above all stay calm! Once at the venue we met Chris Edwards the Todmorden captain who had not shirked the pressure and selected himself for board 5. Huddersfield had a new player on board 1, H.Zeglam who was an unknown quantity to us but was highly praised by their captain Robert Sutcliffe. However, we were encouraged by our large grading advantage on all the boards ranging from 60 to 20 ECF points in our favour, and we certainly were not lacking in confidence at 7:30 p.m.
 
My opponent on board 3 was Eddy Mellor a completely new face to me and at 117 was just the sort of opponent I wanted on a night like this. Robert Sutcliffe had introduced him with a word of caution though as he had apparently beaten a very strong player recently. Not tonight I thought. 1.d4… great lets have a main line Grunfeld. Sadly not. Eddy calmly set up a Colle System against my fianchettoed Bishop with pawns on e3, d4, and c3. It was going to be a long grind and I concentrated on my game looking for the slightest chink in White’s play.

I was vaguely aware that White had thrown the kitchen sink at Martyn Hamer on board 1, and that Martyn had been forced to defend perfectly. On board 2 we had been forced to allow White the win of the exchange for us to make headway. I could not spare a second glance at boards 4 and 5 as Eddy Mellor was not giving me the slightest weakness to aim at and I was behind on the clock. Rybka makes not one criticism or alternative suggestion to any of his moves up to the time control! So, I made my 36th move and the clocks went back 15 minutes to complete the game.

How often do we see an error at or immediately after the time control?  I was relieved to see Eddy’s 37th was his first slip, and one that I was able to convert with care 16 moves later making the match score 2-0 to Todmorden. I went out of the room with Rob Tokeley who had won on board 4 so he could put me in the picture with regards to the match. Rob was confident of wins on 1 and 2, but it was still in the balnace on 5. Then Martyn Hamer quickly joined us to make it 3-0, and I thought I could hear a fat lady singing just down the corridor.

The tension was too much so I went off to the bar. On my way back to watch the final moments of a great occasion I was met by Rob Tokeley who broke the news that Chris Edwards’ flag had fallen on his 35th move. It was no consolation that we then chalked up our fourth win of the evening on board 2 to finish the match at 4-1. Immediately we had to console Chris who we all felt for. The despair must have been awful for him, but the truth is you cannot point to that particular game on the last night of the season. Many points and half points swung both ways for Hebden Bridge and Todmorden from the very first week of the season, with every player in both teams being the benefactor and beneficiary of all sorts of outrageous fortune.
 
All four East Lancs mercenaries, Martyn Hamer, Peter Mulleady, Andrew Clarkson, and Rob Tokeley, thoroughly enjoyed this season’s battle and congratulate Hebden Bridge on their championship win.

And so it was that Hebden Bridge ‘A’ took the title by the narrowest possible margin. Half a game point! Thanks to the “East Lancs mercenaries” for their generous congratulations and competitive spirit throughout the season. No doubt the fight will be just as intense next year. I’m already looking forward to it very much.