Hebden Bridge Chess Club

Is it Captain Marvel or is it Martin Syrett?

As the Calderdale Evening Chess League season begins to draw to a close both of Hebden Bridge Chess Club’s Division 1 teams rode into battle on Monday night in matches that could yet decide their success or failure of their seasons. The club’s regular venue at the Trades Club was unavailable and so the players were forced to de-camp to the unfamiliar surrounds of the White Lion pub. This could have been a disruptive influence on proceedings but it must be said that the function room we were given was big enough, comfortable enough and quiet enough and generally very satisfactory. It also seems that the players agreed with this assessment because both sides managed to win their matches, though in rather contrasting styles.

I’ll deal with the ‘B’ team first. They have been locked in a relegation battle all season and as the night begin they occupied second last position in the league table with Halifax ‘A’ one point above them and Brighouse four points ahead. These were the only two teams they had any chance of over hauling before the end of the season so a win was essential. Their opponents were Belgrave who are occupying a sort of mid-table limbo between the dangers of relegation and the excitement of the title race. In the reverse fixture at Belgrave in November Hebden Bridge lost 3-2 in a match they probably should have won. It was clear they were capable of victory but confidence and expectationshave been low for several months now.

The night began badly for Hebden Bridge as, on board 1, Pete Olley blundered a bishop against Gordon Farrar and was compelled to resign shortly afterwards. Pete has had a very challenging year on board 1 and has generally given an excellent account of himself against the league’s top players although he only has two draws to show for his troubles. The ‘B’ team steadied the ship with comfortable draws on boards 3 and 5 where Andy Leatherbarrow and guest star Steve Priest respectively kept Les Johnson and Angel Gonzalez at bay. All this left the match situation in the balance as Hebden Bridge required the remaining two boards to win the tie

Dave Shapland was first to finish on board 2 where he successfully out fought Malcolm Corbett. The players had met with the same colours last season and they once again discussed the Voronyez Variaiton of Alekhine’s Defence. This line is characterised by White’s attempt to set up a bind on the Black position and force him to create positional concessions in order to liberate his pieces. Dave managed to do this successfully early in the game but Malcolm defended himself stoutly and creatively for a long time until eventually, possibly in desperation, he opted for a line that brought about an unclear tactical melee. For several moves the outcome was unclear but then Dave found the most accurate continuations and Malcolm missed a few difficult saving chances and Hebden Bridge had their first win of the evening.

This left the match all square with just one board left to play. ‘B’ team Captain, Martin Syrett, built up a significant space advantage on board 4 against Mike Barnett but, in the process, he also got himself into trouble on the clock. The tension in the room was palpable for the Hebden Bridge players. Would Martin beat the clock and maintain his advantage or would defeat once again be snatched from the jaws of victory? Find out below where the full game and some accompanying commentary is given:

A thrilling climax to the evening then and huge relief for the ‘B’s who, aided by their Captain’s brave victory, now step out of the relegation zone once again as Halifax ‘A’ fell to a 1-4 defeat at home to Courier ‘A’. The effort must be sustained however for in the last match of the season Hebden Bridge ‘B’ must travel to Brighouse whilst Halifax ‘A’ go to bottom side Todmorden. The ‘B’ team must at least match Halifax’s result to stay in Division 1 next season. At least they are in control of their own destiny. Anyone who wants to see Captain Syretts celebrations after the match should watch the video below which will give you a general impression!

The match card is given below:

Meanwhile, Hebden Bridge ‘A’ are sadly not in a position to be in control of their own destiny. They trail Huddersfield at the top of the table by a single point but now require their nemesis to slip up in order to allow them to retain their title. They did their job against Brighouse on Monday night with three wins, one draw and a single defeat on board 5 where Nick Sykes lost to Nick Hudson.

It feels like a few members of the ‘A’ team might be feeling a little battle weary at the end of a long hard season. Certainly, the side is not winning matches by the kinds of crushing margins they were in the first half of the season. Their title rivals Huddersfield, by contrast, began with a draw and a defeat but have since won every match including two critical victories against Hebden Bridge ‘A’.

On Monday night there were some signs that Alastair Wright’s team still has the stomach to fight to the end though as, on board 1, Dave Wedge won smoothly against Robert Broadbent. By his own admission Dave has not had a vintage season, but he has picked up some form since Christmas and will need to maintain that for the last round match against Courier ‘A’.

Captain, Alastair Wright, also ground out a win on board 3 against Bruce Bendall.

Matthew Parsons played out the most exciting game in this fixture against Dennis Breen. I didn’t get the chance to catch much of this game and when I did I must confess I wasn’t at all sure what was going on. The complications seemed to be extensive. Matthew certainly enjoyed it and, rather than publish it here, I will instead link to his own blog so that you can read his thoughts on it and play through the game which ended in a draw.

The other home team win came from Matthew Wedge-Roberts who dispatched his opponent in fairly straight-forward fashion.

The final match card looked like this:

As it appears increasingly likely that the ‘B’ team will be getting relegated from division 1, the side’s board 2, Dave Shapland, reports on last week’s tragic battle against the dying of the light…

Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty

“At the climax of the cult sci-fi film “Bladerunner” (the link goes to a YouTube clip that includes the quote but if you haven’t seen the whole film go watch it now!) the superhuman android Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) is knocking seven shades of the proverbial out of Deckard (Harrison Ford) and gleefully utters the immortal line of dialogue above as the Deckard smashes an iron bar over his enemy’s head more in hope than expectation. The line, and Hauer’s grinning physog, came immediately to mind as I read a text message from Huddersfield ‘A’s team captain last week. But before we get to that, let’s rewind for a moment…

Last Thursday Hebden Bridge ‘B’ were due to travel to face champion’s elect Huddersfield. Having beaten our ‘A’ team in the last round of fixtures Huddersfield had put themselves into the box seat for the championship. Meanwhile Hebden Bridge ‘B’ were languishing in the relegation zone in desperate need of a result to climb out of the mire. Could the ‘B’ team redeem themselves and at the same time hand the initiative in the title race back to their colleagues? The chances of success were virtually zero, but sometimes in the face of adversity astounding human stories are written. Who’s to say this wouldn’t be one? We had a shot at immortality.

Then I got the phone call on Tuesday evening from our Captain. Which went something like this.

“I’ve defaulted the match on Thursday… you’re the only player we have available… we’ll have to hope we can get results out of the last two matches and scrape through.”

After he had hung up I stared at the phone. No! No, no. This wasn’t right. We couldn’t hand Huddersfield a 5-0 walk over. We might as well hand them the league trophy too. I played for the title winning ‘A’ team last season. I didn’t want Huddersfield to take it back so easily. This was too much. But what could we do? No players available! I went to bed feeling depressed.

On Wednesday morning I woke up still thinking about the default but then I had to get myself in a more positive frame of mind. I had a match for my other club in Leeds that evening. Then it hit me… could I get a team together for the following night by pulling in colleagues from Leeds? It was very short notice, but surely worth a try? One thing I’ve learned about Leeds Chess Club is that they have a sizeable pool of players and plenty of those just want to play games at every given opportunity. If I was going to do it I needed to swing into action straight away.

First things first. I called Huddersfield’s Captain, Robert Sutcliffe early on Wednesday morning to ask if he’d contacted his players to cancel the match the previous evening. Only one it turned out, and he could call him back to re-instate the match. I asked Robert to give me 24hours grace to get some sort of side together. Fortunately for me Robert is the kind of chap who’d much rather play a match than take a walk over and he accepted my proposal happily.

Now I had to get a team together. Next up I spoke to the main man at Leeds Chess Club, Tony Ibbitson. He organises the teams, manages the negotiations with the venue, sets-up out of season activities. He’d be able to help. By 10 o’clock on Wednesday morning Tony had agreed to play against Huddersfield himself and also to send an e-mail out to club members giving them a heads up.

“We’ll talk to players at the club tonight as well. We’ll definitely be able to get a team out for you” he said.

By the end of Wednesday evening I had 4 players including myself! That was enough to take to Huddersfield and Tony was very optimistic about recruiting a fifth player during the course of Thursday. I texted Robert on Thursday at lunch time to confirm that we could play the match, that we had 4 players and were trying for a fifth. Robert replied…

“No prob and very well dun — that’s the spirit!”

The game of chess does actually make an appearance in the film when Batty assumes command of J.F.Sebastian’s pieces against Eldon Tyrell

And that’s when I thought of Roy Batty. Robert had in no way intended to be condescending towards me but the irony of this turn of phrase was not lost on me. In the film Batty knows that Deckard can’t beat him and so does Deckard. Nevertheless, Deckard fights desperately for his life as Batty toys with him. I felt a bit like Deckard did in struggling to get out a team that I knew would be weaker than our regular line up and playing against the strongest side in the division. We were going to get killed.

Thursday night came around and we did get a fifth player. I picked up 3 of the team from Huddersfield station and took them to the match to make their lives a bit easier. I owed them all several drinks. When we arrived at the venue I was very surprised to see that Huddersfield were well below their usual strength. Their board 2 player had made regular appearances on board 4 this season. That said, they still out graded us on every board by at least 20 points and on board 1 I had to face Leo Keely from whom I had not extracted even one half point in two previous attempts.

So we sat down to play and it wasn’t long before I started to feel a faint tingle of optimism. Tony was playing against David Firth on board 2 and had deployed his Black Knights Tango against Dave’s QGD. This was just what I’d hoped for and the reason I had opted to play Tony on board 2. I’ve scored well against Dave in the past with the Budapest Gambit and I was confident that Tony’s eccentric choice could undermine the grade difference between the two. In reality Dave built up a big central space advantage but, like the true hypermodernist that he is, Tony worked around the flanks and slowly wormed his way to equality. In the end Dave offered Tony a draw and Tony accepted. What a brilliant start!

Looking at the other boards at this stage of the evening I was feeling really pleased with how things were developing. We were competing well on all boards including, somewhat to my surprise, on board one! My game with Leo is given below. We debated a Meran System of the Semi-Slav which was also the battle ground for our last contest. On this occasion Leo obtained excellent chances when I went astray late in the opening but he didn’t capitalise and I ended up playing the endgame with a decent advantage.

Leo thought for a long time before accepting the draw I offered in the final position above and I could understand why because the match situation was very tight. On board 3 Dave Summerland had gotten himself into trouble against Nigel Hepworth and gone a piece down. He later regained the piece to go into a knight and pawns vs. bishop and pawns ending but sadly, he made another mistake and lost. On board 4, John Mahoney was playing Robert and had been under pressure in the opening but gradually relieved the situation and had offered a draw in the middle game. Robert declined but shortly afterwards he blundered a piece and John converted his win very smoothly. That levelled the scores and at that point I was pretty confident our board 5 player could hold a draw. It was on this basis that I had offered peace terms myself because even though I had an decent advantage I couldn’t figure out how I was going to convert it and I didn’t want to get swindled.

So it came down to board 5 with the match all square. I could never have dreamed that we’d have come so close to a result but here we were all staring intently at the game between Stuart Oliver and Phil Rhaim. Stuart was having all the fun but Phil was defending bravely and had a bit more time on his clock. I’d have been over the moon with draw and a drawn match, but unhappily, Phil couldn’t hold on and Stuart’s attack finally broke through in dramatic fashion. The final score 3-2 to Huddersfield. Unlike “Bladerunner” then, no fairy tale ending to this story, but if the ‘B’ team does go down, we’ll go down fighting to the very end.”

Here is the score card for the match:

‘C’ team Captain/Manager Pete Rawling’s has rightly heaped more superlatives on his side’s recent play

It was a busy night at the Trades Club on Monday as both of Hebden Bridge Chess Club’s Division 2 sides played home fixtures. In addition, the ‘A’ team played a re-scheduled fixture in Division 1. John Kerrane reports on the night’s events for us. Starting with the ‘A’ team.

“Hebden Bridge ‘A’ took on Halifax ‘A’ in a re-arranged match and scored a 3-2 win, aided by a default on board 5 by the visitors, who otherwise ran the current league leaders very close, Matthew Parsons scoring the only win for the home side over the board.”

The individual results were:

Here is Captain Alastair Wright’s draw with Ray Cully on board 3. This result means Alastair is still unbeaten in the league this season although I suspect he feels he has drawn a few too many of his games so far.

Back to John’s report…

“Meanwhile, the C team continued their terrific run of good form of late by brushing aside the challenge from Halifax B with a thumping 4½-½ win. Pete Leonard, the team’s new acquisition this season, scored his fourth win in a row, while in the only game where one of the Hebden players looked in trouble, Steve Priest managed to hold on to score a draw.”

The individual results were:

Here is Josh Blinkhorn’s win against John Aldridge. I fear that the last few moves of the game may be missing but the bulk of it is here for your enjoyment.

‘C’ Team Captain Pete Rawlings had this to say of his charges…

“Another glory night for the Cs with a resounding victory against Halifax ‘B’ against whom in October we managed to lose 3-2. We remain in contention for the top two places and promotion. This is a good team with each player offering guile and resoluteness at the board.”

Finally, John tells us about the ‘D’ team’s result…

“Their junior partners in the second division, Hebden Bridge ‘D’, didn’t fare so well, however, going down 3½-1½ to Courier B. The home side’s best result here was Chris Greaves’s draw on board 4 but the Courier higher boards were too strong for the home players.”

The individual results were:

Here is as much of Chris Greaves draw as I can salvage from the score sheet. This was a good result for one of the club’s rookies.

Next week the ‘A’ and ‘B’ teams face massive challenges in their fight for the Championship and against relegation respectively. The ‘B’ team play at home on Monday against Todmorden ‘A’ who are bottom. Lose that match and they will be as good as down. Then on Thursday the ‘A’ team travel to Huddersfield ‘A’ who are, realistically, their only challengers for the title. Win that match and the Champions will almost certainly retain their title. Lose and Huddersfield will become favorites. “Squeaky bum time” as a certain football manager has been known to say!

John Kerrane reports on the second Division 1 derby clash between our ‘A’ and ‘B’ teams.

“On Monday evening at the Trades Club, Holme Street, Hebden Bridge Chess Club’s B team faced their toughest challenge of the season when they played at home against their own A team, the current Calderdale League First Division leaders.

Realistically, if the B team could expect to beat the A team, there would be something wrong with the selection, but the result was closer than the scoreline, a 4-1 win to the A team, might suggest. All the games were close, and the two draws by Dave Shapland on board 2 against Matthew Parsons, and between John Kerrane and Matthew Wedge-Roberts on board 4, were well-deserved.”

The individual results were:

White (John Kerrane) to play

White (Martin Syrett) to play

Black (Dave Wedge) to play

Black (Nick Sykes) to play

Black (Matthew Parsons) to play

Just like our furry friend here, Martin Syrett’s ‘B’ team are feeling the squeeze in the lower reaches of Division 1

First of all, apologies to all readers for the long delay between events and the posting of articles on this blog. My home broadband connection went down two weeks ago and getting the service resumed has been an interminable hell of calls to one of our prominent national broadband providers! I won’t be recommending them to anyone in future. In the meantime I’ve been trying to write posts offline and then get to public Wi-Fi hotspots to actually publish. This is harder than you might think!

Anyway, Hebden Bridge Chess Club’s ‘A’ and ‘B’ teams both returned to action last week with ties that took place on Monday night (the 31st).

Alastair Wright’s ‘A’ team began the evening only on point behind Huddersfield with a match in hand and they showed yet again why they are in contention for the title by crushing the league’s bottom team Todmorden ‘A’.

The night started well for Hebden Bridge as, first Nick Sykes on board 5, and then Matthew Parsons on board 2, took advantage of blunders by the Edwards brothers Paul and Chris to take a 2-0 lead. Matthew certainly didn’t feel like he had secured much out of the opening at all and even thought that Black had some chances to make life difficult for him. However, he cunningly found a way to induce a mistake from his opponent and took full advantage.

On board 1 Dave Wedge faced Todmorden’s new recruit, Andrew Clarkson, who had the temerity to play one of Dave’s own pet opening lines against him (in the form of the Pirc Defence) and held Dave to a fairly comfortable draw. Our thanks go to Andrew for taking the time to provide the notes to the game in the game viewer below.

Dave’s son Matthew continued his rich vain of form as he beat Mike Huett in the game below.

And finally, the Captain’s game on board 3 went on late into the evening with Alastair being given a good run for his money by Scott Gornall before the pair agreed peace terms.

The final match card for the fixture is given below.

Martin Syrett’s ‘B’ team are the ones in this post’s eponymous “tight spot”. They’ve been flirting with the relegation zone all season long and when other results conspired against them on Monday night (namely Brighouse continuing Belgrave’s woeful run of form with a 4-1 win at home) they slid back into it on board score.

Despite the bigger picture however, this was a reasonably creditable result although I suspect that Martin will feel his side may have missed an opportunity.

The result of the night was on the first board to finish as Pete Olley obtained a comfortable draw against Darwin Ursal on board 1. In an opening that looked a bit like a Tarrasch Variation of the Queen’s Gambit Pete won a pawn in the opening at the expense of suffering from impeded development. The extra pawn didn’t mean that much in the end as Black’s pawn structure was damaged, but it did keep Pete’s illustrious opponent occupied as he tried to build up some sort of compensation. It will be interesting to see what Darwin’s first grade is at the end of this season, his current provisional grade on the Yorkshire Chess Association list is 159.

Next to finish was Andy Leatherbarrow on board 3 as he also held a comfortable draw against Pete Moss that continues a welcome return to form for him since the Christmas break.

Hebden Bridge ‘B’ missed the services of a flu-ridden John Kerrane on board 5, but his replacement Neil Bamford did his job exceptionally by beating Ray Cully on board 5. I’m not sure if Ray ran out of time in the final position of the game below because it seems as if White still has plenty to play for even if he is certainly worse. Whether it be on time or not, congratulations go to Neil for winning this crucial game.

Team Captain, Martin Syrett, suffered another evening of pain and anguish as he once again fell victim to a nasty tactic that lost him a piece for nothing. This left the score level at 2 all with just the board 2 encounter left to play and the tension at the Lee Mount Club was high. Both teams really needed to win the match in order to pull away from the relegation zone.

This last game was probably the most interesting and complicated game of the night. If you had scored the match on paper before hand you would have expected Hebden Bridge’s Dave Shapland to be too strong for Howard Wood, but in the event Howard played nicely in a Fianchetto Variation of the Sicilian Defence. Dave’s queen’s side counter play never got going and Howard’s rickety looking king’s side attack proved to be more dangerous than it first appeared.

In the game above the players had only reached White’s 22nd move by the time the rest of the games had been concluded and both players were beginning to look like they would get embroiled in a time scramble. Howard had offered Dave a draw after playing 21.Qe2 and Dave, waiting to see the outcome of the board 4 game, declined and then had a long think about his own move 21. The computer suggests that the best continuation would have been 21…Rf8. The game move is not disastrous but it took Dave a long time to play it. Howard quickly played 22.f4 (which seems to have been a missed opportunity as 22.Nd6!? looks very promising) and offered Dave the draw again. Now with only about 10 minutes each to play another 14 moves Dave had to do some speedy risk assessment. He said afterwards,

“The position seemed to me to be just about equal but I could see a lot of danger for Black. I thought I had it covered and was planning to play 22… a6 if I had decided to play on. However, I considered the complications ahead would not be played accurately by either side due to the time trouble we were both in. At a congress, or in the event that the outcome of this game did not effect the match result, I would certainly have played on but, in the end, I considered Pete’s excellent result on board 1 and thought, ‘it would be a shame for that result not to mean anything and if I lose then that will be what happens’. This made up my mind and I accepted Howard’s offer.”

As a final note it is worth mentioning that Dave was right, 22…a6 does appear to secure Black a small advantage but the position remains very sharp and complicated. Let us hope that, at the end of the season, this single decision does not decide the fate of the ‘B’ team’s status. The final match card is given below.