Hebden Bridge Chess Club

The Chinese won both the Open and Women’s sections in Batumi. A rare and outstanding achievement.

Your editor is fresh back from a short holiday and, as you might expect, there is plenty to catch up on. This week we’ll get an update on Round 1 of the Calderdale Evening League 2 matches which took place last week and also the second round of League 1 matches that (mostly!) took place this week.

Before all of that though it would be most remiss not to reflect on the chess event that has been dominating coverage on all the big chess news sites for the last two weeks. What do you mean ‘Which event?’ Surely you’ve noticed that the biggest (literally) chess event in the world has been taking place in Batumi, Georgia. Yes, I mean the chess Olympiad.

Hillarp Persson vs. Laurusas. White to move. Black has just played Qf1 threatening to pick up the bishop after Qg2+ next. Can you see how the legendary attacker Tiger Hillarp Persson concluded the game with White here.

For the past three editions of this great event, which is a real personal favorite of mine, I’ve been involved with running the Fantasy Chess Olympiad. Along with Matty Webb who did all the clever web development work, we’ve had a great time entertaining a global audience and providing them with an opportunity to engage with the Olympiad in a new and interesting way. Sadly, this time around, we both concluded some months ago that neither of us had the time or the energy to run it again. We hope it will make a return for the 2020 edition.

In some ways, not having the FCO to worry about over the last two weeks has left me with more time to enjoy the event itself. It has been extremely well covered in all the usual places and, for a change, England have actually performed creditably well.  The team this time consisted of Michael Adams, Luke McShane, David Howell, Gawain Jones and Nick Pert (Nigel Short was busy making a monkey of himself as a candidate for the FIDE presidency which is too long and tawdry a tail to discuss in any more detail here). After 9 of the 10 rounds England had managed to manouevre themselves into a three way share of third place and were genuine medal contenders having lost only one match to Azerbaijan at that stage.

Haast vs. Kosteniuk. Black to play. Former Women’s World Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk finished off her opponent her in elegant style. The firs move is fairly obvious but can you see the whole idea?

Unfortunately, they were then drawn against the Russians in round 10 and, despite the fact that the Russian line up looked marginally less frightening than it might have done (no Grischuk or Svidler), they still managed to beat our heroes fairly convincingly with Vladimir Kramnik on board 3 (!!!) downing David Howell in the only decisive game of the match. However, after this set back, England picked themselves up and managed to crush Kazakhstan to finish the event in fifth place. This is the best result for England at an Olympiad for over 20 years so congratulations to them.

In the end the Chinese won both the Open and Women’s sections following a dramatic final round that saw the infamous Sonneborn-Berger tie break invoked. this effectively meant that the final result wasn’t known for quite some time after all the top teams had finished as the results of their earlier opponents was also needed in order to calculate the tie break scores.

I might well return to the Olympiad briefly in my next post but for now, I’d like to share a couple of interesting positions that caught my attention. These are both featured on the right. See if you can find the winning continuations in both situations. The solutions are given (along with the games in full) in the game viewer at the bottom of this post.

Now, back to more local affairs…

Calderdale League 2

The first round of League 2 fixtures this season took place on Monday 24th of September and there was a very welcome last-minute surprise in the form of a Huddersfield ‘C’ team joining the league. This brought the total number of teams up to six and meant that one team would not need to take a bye in each round of fixtures. As it was our own ‘D’ team scheduled not to play in round 1 Huddersfield’s new arrivals were particularly welcome and travelled to the Trades Club to take on our juniors (plus John Kerrane!)

Huddersfield brought along a team with some new faces in it alongside some seasoned veterans. It looked like the visitors would be favorites on paper and so it proved over the board as they inflicted a whitewash on the home side. Here is the full match scorecard:

Hebden Bridge ‘D’ vs. Huddersfield ‘C’
J.Kerrane 0 – 1 J.Lavan (W)
T.Dodd 0 – 1 R.Sutcliffe (W)
Z.Sandhu 0 – 1 C.Bond (W)
L.Curry 0 – 1 M.Rojinsky (W)
J.Edmondson 0 – 1 P.Czerwinski (W)
0 – 5

Elsewhere in League 2, Brighouse dispatched Belgrave ‘C’ at the Belgrave Club with Robert Broadbent, Nick Hudson and Adrian Dawson all scoring wins for the visitors. Steve Harrington managed an excellent consolation point against Paul Whitehouse on board 3 and the bottom board was drawn. The local Halifax derby was only contested on four boards with the ‘B’ team sweeping aside the ‘C’ team on all of those to win the match 4 – 0.

These results see the new Huddersfield ‘C’ outfit go top of the table with Halifax ‘B’ and Brighouse in hot pursuit. One would expect these three teams to be duking it out right through the season.

Calderdale League 1

This week the second round of League 1 fixtures took place. But, before we dive into those it’s worth mentioning that the Huddersfield ‘A’ vs. Huddersfield ‘B’ match, which was postponed from round 1, also took place on the 24th of September and resulted in a surprising and resounding defeat for the senior side by 4 – 1. The lower rated players in the ‘B’ team on boards 3, 4 and 5 all managed wins whilst on the top two boards, where the match ups were more even, the games were drawn.

This week though, Huddersfield ‘A’ bounced straight back on Wednesday night when they fielded a much stronger team against a Halifax ‘A’ side who were, conversely, far weaker than they had been against Hebden Bridge ‘A’ (@Golden Lion) in the first round. Even though Huddersfield defaulted their fifth board, they won on three of the others as Greg Eagleton, Mitchell Burke and Nick Sykes beat Richard Porter, Vivienne Webster and Pete Moss respectively. Nick has sent us his game which you will also find in the viewer at the end of this post.

By turns, Huddersfield ‘B’, having bagged that excellent derby win were soundly thrashed by Belgrave ‘A’ who had only managed a draw in their own derby match in the first round of fixtures. John Morgan on board 1, Karim Khan on board 4 and Steve Harrington (Again! He’s 3/3 for the season so far against higher rated opponents) on board 5 all won. On boards 2 and 4 Huddersfield managed to hold draws against higher rated opponents.

This just leaves us with Hebden Bridge ‘C’s match against Belgrave ‘B’ to report on. These two teams, along with Huddersfield ‘B’, appear to be the most likely candidates for relegation this season and so, seeing as Huddersfield ‘B’ had already won a match and Belgrave ‘B’ drawn one, it felt imperative that Hebden get off the mark. The match was pretty tight by all accounts. John Kerrane summarises proceedings for us below:

The two teams looked evenly matched on paper, and so it turned out on the night. Neil Bamford’s win for Hebden Bridge after a long endgame on board 4 was matched by Dave Colledge’s on board 5 for Belgrave. The other three games were drawn, leaving the final score level.

The individual results were:

Hebden Bridge ‘C’ vs. Belgrave ‘B’
A.Leatherbarrow ½ – ½  G.Farrar
P.Gledhill ½ – ½ M.Barnett
J.Kerrane ½ – ½  K.Marsh
N.Bamford 1 – 0 L.Johnson
T.Sullivan 0 – 1 D.Colledge
2½ – 2½

The big clash between Hebden Bridge ‘A’ and Hebden Bridge ‘B’ will take place at the Golden Lion on Monday night as the venue was not available for the match to be played last Monday. Should Hebden ‘A’ win that match then there would be no teams in the league with a 100% record after just two matches! It looks like this season could become very interesting indeed.

It’s been a very long time indeed since this website reported on the Calderdale Evening League so it’s time for an action replay! There is a lot of catching up to do so let’s begin at once and rewind back to week commencing Monday the 19th of February when League 1 teams convened for round 10.

Round 10

First of all an unusual and potentially very serious incident occurred on the Wednesday night as Hebden Bridge ‘A’ travelled to Huddersfield ‘A’ for an encounter that would likely decide which of these two teams would mount a serious challenge to league leaders Golden Lion. The match was building nicely when one of Huddersfield’s players became unwell and ultimately had to be taken to hospital after just 30 minutes play. Happily, we can report that the player concerned is ok but understandably the teams decided to abandon the match and rearrange the fixture for another day. More on this later.

This incident enabled Golden Lion to climb further clear at the top by thrashing the league’s back markers Brighouse away 0 – 5. All of the games were over by about 9.15 although in a couple of instances Brighouse’s players could have chosen to labour on in much worse positions rather than ending their evening’s early. It would almost certainly not have changed the outcome had they battled on.

Elsewhere, Hebden Bridge ‘B’ defaulted their second match of the season as they were unable to raise a side for the away match at Halifax ‘A’. Halifax themselves only had four players and for the results was recorded as 4 – 0 to the home side.

The final match of Round 10 between Halifax ‘B’ and Belgrave ‘A’ ended 1 – 4 to the visitors with wins by John Morgan, Richard Bowman and Karim Khan. Halifax salvaged good draws against higher rated opponents for Peter Hughes against Ian Hunter and Vivienne Webster against Dave Patrick.

Round 11

On the 12th of March Hebden Bridge ‘A’ faltered in their pursuit of Golden Lion as they failed to beat Belgrave ‘A’ away. They were greatly hampered by only having four players and indeed, would quite possibly have won the match if they had been able to field a full team. Pete Leonard got an excellent result when he beat Ian Hunter on board 1 and Nick Sykes drew with Dave Patrick on board 2. Sam Swain won on board 4 against Karim Khan but, with Belgrave’s Richard Bowman beating another Richard (Bedford) on board 3 and the default on board 5, it was only a drawn match for Hebden.

Golden Lion took full advantage of their pursuers slip up as they crushed Halifax ‘B’ at home 5 – 0. Halifax defaulted a board themselves but Andrew Clarkson won a very nice game on the Black side of an Anti-Grunfeld Variation against Pete Hughes, Dave Shapland played aggressively against Scott Gornall who survived a violent attack on his king only to emerge a piece down in a simple ending and Mick Connor and Marc Turu also scored wins against Vivienne Webster and Mac Randhawa respectively.

Hebden Bridge ‘B’ bounced back from the disappointment of defaulting their round 10 match by edging out Brighouse in a tight match where all five games ended decisively. Hebden lost the top two boards as Robert Broadbent defeated Andy Leatherbarrow and Chris Lund beat Martin Syrett. However, Hebden won on board 3, 4 and 5 to snatch a vital victory that gives them a good chance of surviving relegation this season. Paul Gledhill, John Lavan and Neil Bamford scored the wins.

Sadly, there was another default fixture in round 11 as Halifax ‘A’ were unable to field a team at Huddersfield ‘A’.

Round 12

This brings us to a crucial round of ties played on the 26th of March as all of the top three played in the same venue. Hebden Bridge ‘A’ hosted Golden Lion and Hebden Bridge ‘B’ hosted Huddersfield ‘A’ at the Trades Club.

Hebden started the evening a point behind Golden Lion and knowing that only a victory would be good enough to keep realistic title hopes alive. However, they had been the only team so far this season to defeat their guests when they crushed them 1 – 4 at Golden Lion before Christmas.

This time around Hebden were not as strong as, although they welcomed back Matthew Parsons to top board for the occasion, they were without Andrew and Chris Bak and also John Allan. This meant that Pete Leonard, who played board 5 in the away match, was on board 2 and regulars Nick Sykes, Richard Bedford and Sam Swain completed the line-up.

Golden Lion meanwhile had strengthened their line up from that match pre-Christmas and replaced David Innes on board 5 with Mick Connor. The top four boards of Hamer, Clarkson, Cook and Shapland all played in the previous match and, on the night, all improved on their individual results from the home defeat to help Golden Lion move well clear at the top of the league.

The final position between Martyn Hamer and Matthew Parsons. Guess the result!

On board 1, Martyn Hamer and Matthew Parsons played out a fascinating and highly complicated encounter that ended in a draw in a very unusual final position (see right). In previous encounters between these two they have circled each other carefully and exchanged prosaic wins in their last two match ups. This time the gloves came off and the sparks flew. This excellent and entertaining game appears in the game viewer at the end of this report along with some notes by Matthew.

Hebden did manage to win on board 5 just as they had done in the away match. This was another very complicated game where Sam Swain, having built up a very comfortable and promising position against Mick Connor decide to start sacrificing pieces to open up his opponent’s king. With the aid of a computer it is possible to find better defensive ideas than Mick did but, from a practical perspective, it was a very difficult position to defend and the attack looked very scary. Mick went wrong and Sam won in combustible style.

After this brief glimpse of optimism the other three boards all ended in defeat for the home side however. Dave Shapland got nothing from the opening against Richard ‘Beaky’ Bedford but pounced on a brief window of opportunity afford to him by a slightly slow move by his opponent. Here too accurate defensive moves were required but they were hard to find and Beaky relented under pressure.

Nick Sykes seemed to be defending himself very solidly with Black against Phil Cook on board 3 but he too made one mistake and was brutally punished for his error as Phil converted mercilessly.

The final game to finish went on late into the night. Andrew Clarkson had lost any opening edge he may have had against Pete Leonard Alekhine’s Defence and the game seemed to be headed for a draw when the players entered a double bishop and pawns ending. Andrew had other ideas however and decided to continue playing, with no real risk of losing, just in case his team needed a victory to seal the match. By the time it became evident that he didn’t need to win he had managed to secure a winning advantage in a single bishop (same colour) and pawns ending. This game features twice in the game viewer as both players have analysed the game for us.

In the end Golden Lion won a match full of high quality and exciting chess to stamp their authority on the title race with two rounds to go. Here’s the final match score card:

Hebden Bridge ‘A vs. Golden Lion
M.Parsons ½ – ½ M.Hamer (W)
P.Leonard 0 – 1 A.Clarkson (W)
N.Sykes 0 – 1 P.Cook (W)
R.Bedford 0 – 1 D.Shapland (W)
S.Swain 1 – 0 M.Connor (W)
1½ – 3½

Meanwhile, just across the room, third place side Huddersfield ‘A’ were locked in combat with Hebden Bridge ‘B’. Just like the other match, the hosts made a bright start with a win on the bottom board but were quickly overhauled by their higher rated opponents on the other boards.

It was John Kerrane on board 5 who gave the hosts something to cheer about. Huddersfield’s Robert Sutcliffe deployed his Blackmar-Diemer Gambit. Kerrane could have played 2…e6 and simply transposed into his favorite French Defence, but he chose instead to take Robert on and was rewarded with a lively and active game in which the players castled on opposite wings. Although John’s attack looked quicker on the queen’s side, Robert found a way to block up the structure and then went on the attack himself on the king’s side. However, his attack also faltered and finally, John broke through in the centre, fittingly, with the extra pawn that he’d won on the second move, to take the full point.

Sadly, not long afterwards, Huddersfield were level as Steve Westmoreland took full advantage of a slightly eccentric opening sequence by Paul Gledhill and won a piece early in the game. That it took him a little while to patiently convert his advantage should not delude the reader that he was ever in any danger of failing to do so.

That just left the top three boards. On board 2 Dave Keddie and Mark Stollery set the board alight with some fiery complications in a game that Mark wanted to be an Alekhine’s Defence but Dave elected instead to steer into a Four Knights opening. Mark chose a very tactical continuation but he too blundered a piece early on. Dave made no mistakes and put the game away in 19 moves to put Huddersfield in the lead.

The match was won for the visitors when Leo Keely finished off Andy Leatherbarrow from a Spanish opening. On this occasion however, it was not to be a typical ‘Spanish torture’ with a slow build up and attack by White on the king’s side whilst Black aims for counter-play on the queen’s side. Instead, Leo actually won the game by grabbing an extra pawn on the queen’s side and liquidating down to a position where that extra pawn was able to push through to b7 and at the end he finished with a nice tactic to exploit Andy’s overloaded rook which couldn’t defend the back rank and the weak f7 square.

Finally, in the longest game of the match, Hebden’s Captain, Martin Syrett, was slowly and inexorably ground down by Dave Tooley who thereby helped his side clinch a convincing 1 – 4 victory. Here is the final match scorecard:

Hebden Bridge ‘B’ vs Huddersfield ‘A’
A.Leatherbarrow 0 – 1 L.Keely (W)
M.Stollery 0 – 1 D.Keddie (W)
M.Syrett 0 – 1 D.Tooley (W)
P.Gledhill 0 – 1 S.Westmoreland (W)
J.Kerrane 1 – 0 R.Sutcliffe (W)
1 – 4

Elsewhere in Calderdale, Belgrave ‘A’ continued their resurgence as they took full advantage of more Halifax ‘A’ woes at the Lee Mount Club. Halifax defaulted board 2 and 3 and lost on the other three boards as the visitors emerged with a clean sweep and a slightly dissatisfied feeling despite the result.

Also at the Lee Mount, bottom side Brighouse finally managed to secure their first points of the season as the edged out Halifax ‘B’ in a tight encounter. The key to the match was the top two boards where both Robert Broadbent and Nick Hudson managed to beat Peter Hughes and Scott Gornall respectively. Two draws on boards 4 and 5 were enough to see Brighouse over the line. Kudos to them for getting off the mark in what’s been a tough season for them.

This round of fixtures all but crowned Golden Lion as league champions as they now sat four points clear of Hebden Bridge ‘A’ with two fixtures remaining. Hebden had an extra match in hand but they would still need Golden Lion to lose at home to Halifax ‘A’ and Huddersfield ‘A’ in order to have any chance of catching them.

We’ll report on round 13 (which took place on the 9th of April) and 14 (which takes place next week) in our next report and also reflect on the final fixture in League 2. In the meantime there are a host of games available (16!)from rounds 10, 11 and 12 in the game viewer below. Thanks as always to those players who have sent us their games and annotated them.

A suitably snow-related race for the seasonal conditions! Hebden Bridge ‘A’ and Golden Lion are the leaders in League 1 at the moment with little to choose between them. Photo used under Creative Commons terms and sourced from Eric Teela’s Flickr photo stream.

It’s been over a month since our last report on the Calderdale League. We didn’t report at all on the seventh round of League 1 which took place just before Christmas. The main reason for this was that, unfortunately, neither Hebden Bridge team contested their scheduled matches. Hebden Bridge ‘B’ were unable to field a team and defaulted their match with Belgrave ‘A’. Meanwhile, Hebden Bridge ‘A’ were ready to play against Halifax ‘B’ but the visitors then requested a postponement. This match will now take place next Monday the 22nd.

Meanwhile, Golden Lion were reinstating their title credentials by pipping League leaders Huddersfield ‘A’ away in a very tense affair. Dave Shapland won early on board 5 against Dave Tooley to give the visitors the lead but the next two games to finish were drawn and this left Roger Keely against Pete Mulleady and Leo Keely against Phil Cook. Both looked very close and one wouldn’t have betted against two draws at this point. However, as clock pressure started to make itself felt towards the end of the evening the games fell decisively, one to each side, as Roger blundered against Pete while Leo picked Phil’s pocket in an endgame it appeared he had no way of winning. So, it ended 2 – 3 and this result ensured Golden Lion were back on top of the League at Christmas

The second half of the season got underway on Monday night and, as is traditional, featured the return derby matches. In this instance for Hebden Bridge and Halifax.

Hebden Bridge ‘A’ beat their ‘B’ team comfortably (4-1) in September but they have struggled against them in previous years. Would they struggle this time? As you would expect the line ups meant that, on paper, Hebden Bridge ‘A’ had a comfortable rating advantage on every board. With captain Pete Leonard on board 1 followed by John Allan, Richard Bedford, Neil Suttie and Sam Swain all the players were rated over 150. Martin Syrett’s ‘B’ team however was packed with seasoned campaigners all capable of causing an upset on their day. Andy Leatherbarrow was on board 1, Martin on 2 and then new man Paul Gledhill who is having an excellent debut season, John Kerrane and Neil Bamford.

In the end the ‘B’ team were unable to land a telling blow on their opponents. Paul, John and Neil all managed highly creditable draws against their opponents but on the top two boards Pete and John both won to ensure Hebden ‘A’ kept up their title chase.

Here is the match scorecard:

Hebden Bridge ‘B’ vs. Hebden Bridge ‘A’
Andy Leatherbarrow 0 – 1 Pete Leonard
Martin Syrett 0 – 1 John Allan
Paul Gledhill ½ – ½ Richard Bedford
John Kerrane ½ – ½ Neil Suttie
Neil Bamford ½ – ½ Sam Swain
1½ – 3½

Halifax ‘A’ lost to their ‘B’ team colleagues in the first match of the season but took their revenge this time around as they won their match comfortably and in exactly the same fashion as Hebden Bridge ‘A’ by drawing on the lower boards and winning the top two boards with Bill Somerset and Richard Porter over turning Peter Hughes and Scott Gornall respectively. This restored some order to the two Halifax teams’ league positions too with the ‘A’ team moving 3 points clear of their colleagues, who have that match against Hebden ‘A’ in hand.

Having agreed to reverse the venue for the first fixture of the season, Huddersfield ‘A’ were due to host Brighouse at home on Wednesday night but this match was postponed when the wintery weather caused chaos on the roads in the area .

That just leaves us to cover league leaders Golden Lion who fought their way to victory at home in a very tough match against Belgrave ‘A’. The 3½ – 1½ score line does not reflect the close nature of the encounter. Golden Lion fell behind early in the evening as Dave Colledge defused David Innes’ attacking intentions taking the gambit materials and keeping them.

Next to finish was board 2 where Phil Cook and John Morgan drew their game. Now, down one point with three boards left to finish it seemed the home team were up against it but they recovered and gained the lead courtesy of two marvellous games. First of all, on board 1, Martyn Hamer initiated a devastating attack on Ian Hunter’s king to sweep him aside. This was followed by an admirable technical victory by Andrew Clarkson over Dave Patrick. The rook and minor piece ending appeared pretty level at first glance but Andrew used his king to boldly march up the board not once, but twice with decisive effect.

Now Golden Lion had the lead but, in the final game to finish Karim Khan had the better of Dave Shapland. That was, seemingly, until he realised he had to win the game to tie the match. Both players had only a few minutes left to complete a knight and pawns end game where Karim had four pawns to Dave’s two. Under normal circumstance Karim would have converted easily but, under the pressure of the clock and needing a win he went astray, lost his knight and then his pawns meaning Dave had swindled his first win from this opponent. Historically it’s been the other way around!

All this leaves Golden Lion still at the top on 14 points from eight matches. Hebden ‘A’ are two points behind but have that match against Halifax ‘B’ in hand next week. If they can win that 5 – 0 they’ll be just half a board point behind Golden Lion. Huddersfield ‘A’ are still in third on 9 points but they now have two postponed matches to play so they are still right in the hunt.

At the other end of the table Brighouse, without a point, look doomed. Halifax ‘B’ are on 4 points, Hebden ‘B’ have 5 and then Halifax ‘A’ and Belgrave ‘A’ have 7 each. Theoretically, any of these last four could occupy the second relegation spot.

In the game viewer below are a selection of games from this week and the round played before Christmas. Our thanks as always to those who have sent in their games for publication. These columns would be greatly diminished without them.

An interesting position from Shapland vs. Scurfield in the Halifax ‘A vs. Golden Lion match. It’s White’s move and he appears to have an over whelming attack. However, precision is still required. How would you proceed? Find the solution and the game continuation in the game viewer at the end of this post.

Calderdale League 1 took another step towards the halfway mark last week and the season is shaping up to be very interesting indeed. In our last report we saw that both Golden Lion and Huddersfield ‘A’ stumbled to their first defeat and draw of the season respectively, both to Hebden Bridge teams. It’s now very tight at the top between these two and Hebden Bridge ‘A’ and then the next four teams Belgrave ‘A’, Halifax ‘B’, Hebden Bridge ‘B’ and Halifax ‘A’ are all pretty close together as well. How would week 6 play out?

Let’s start the report by recounting events at the Lee Mount in Halifax where Hebden Bridge ‘B’ were visiting Halifax ‘B’ and Golden Lion took on Halifax ‘A’.

Hebden ‘B’ sported a very different look to their last match away at Huddersfield where they had benefitted from having a couple of ‘A’ team regulars in the side that helped them draw with the league leaders. This time out they had Andy Leatherbarrow back on board 1, Martin Syrett on 2, John Kerrane on 3, Paul Gledhill on 4 and Neil Bamford on 5. This team matched up pretty closely to Halifax’s side although the host team held higher ratings on all but board 2.

The first board to finish was in fact the board two clash between the team captains and Martin came out on top against Scott Gornall. Scott is normally a tough player to beat but Martin seemed to develop a ferocious attack quite easily and was able to carry the day fairly swiftly. Soon after, the board 1 game between Andy Leatherbarrow and Peter Hughes and the board 5 game between Neil Bamford and Ray Cully ended in draws. Leatherbarrow and Hughes looked to be a tightly controlled, risk free affair where both sides probed and then decided that a draw was ok. It was probably more ok for Andy considering the match situation. On board 5 there was a feeling that Neil could have pressed for longer to try and eek out a win against Ray but he, like Andy was out-rated by 15 points by his opponent and the draw edged Hebden closer to a crucial match win.

That victory was sealed when John Kerrane polished off Howard Wood with great efficiency and then, towards the end of the evening, Paul Gledhill crowned a very fine team effort by beating Vivienne Webster, another tough opponent.

The final match card looked like this:

Halifax ‘A’ vs. Hebden Bridge ‘B’
P.Hughes ½ – ½ A.Leatherbarrow (White)
S.Gornall 0 – 1 M.Syrett (White)
H.Wood 0 – 1 J.Kerrane (White)
V.Webster 0 – 1 S.Gornall (White)
R.Cully ½ – ½ N.Bamford (White)
1 – 4

Across the room, Golden Lion were slowly but surely grinding out another win to recover from their defeat to Hebden ‘A’ in round 5. Dave Shapland picked the same team that had played in that match and saw everyone but David Innes on board 5 improve their performance by half a point or more. Admittedly the opposition was a little weaker than it had been a few weeks ago but the visitors never looked in trouble on any of the boards aside from the one they lost. Dave Shapland sacrificed no fewer than three pawns against Sam Scurfield on board 4. Each time Sam accepted one he put greater pressure on himself to defend accurately and, as his clock time ebbed away, eventually he started making mistakes and Dave’s attack broke through.

Martyn Hamer drew comfortably with Bill Somerset on board 1 before David over-pressed on board 5 against Dave Loughenbury. Having sacrificed a pawn for the initiative in the opening, David won back the material but then swapped off the last pieces on the board only to realise later that the king and pawn ending he’d acquiesced to was losing.

The match was level and the last two boards looked unclear but on board 2 Phil Cook appeared to have significant advantage both on the board and on the clock against Richard Porter although the position was messy and very complicated. Meanwhile Andrew Clarkson and Carlos Velosa were locked in a Maroczy Bind-type position that appeared balanced and tense. Andrew declined a draw at one point wanting to ensure that Phil was going to win before he considered acquiescing. This was risky as both players were very low on time, but Andrew judged it well and, by the time Phil did convert the full point against Richard, Carlos too had gone astray and found that he too was losing this time in a piece and pawns ending.

The final score was 1½ – 3½.

Meanwhile, back at the Trades Club, Hebden Bridge ‘A’ were playing their fifth home fixture of the season (in six games played so far!) and should now feel they have gained plenty of practice playing with the Black pieces! Their opponents this time were Brighouse and they should have been very confident of defeating the bottom team despite having a much weaker team than for their last outing at Golden Lion.

Pete Leonard had played board 5 in that match but this time he was on top board. John Allan was promoted from board 4 to board 2. Nick Sykes returned to play board 3 and Richard Bedford and Neil Suttie made up the rest of the line up. With this team Hebden out-pointed Brighouse heavily on every board but board 1 and yet they almost failed to win the match.

Pete Leonard and Robert Broadbent chopped wood in fairly frenetic fashion on the top board. They were down to two pawns a knight and a rook each by the time they agreed peace terms on move 36. Meanwhile on board 2, John Allan suffered a major malfunction against Nick Hudson who found a wrinkle in one tactical variation that netted him an exchange in the end game. John continued only briefly but then decided to resign shortly afterwards.

Hebden saved themselves (sometimes literally!) on the lower boards. Nick Sykes was far from impressed with his game but he never the less managed to beat Paul Whitehouse when his opponent blundered a bishop to him on move 26. The rest was just a matter of mopping up.

Neil Suttie was also forced to toil on board 5 against Tim Pryke. Finding himself in one of those games where he was perfectly solid but without much of a platform for really dynamic or aggressive play, Neil had to slowly accumulate advantages until his position was overwhelming. First he won a pawn, then he managed to triple Tim’s pawns on the b-file, then he won a second pawn and isolated all White’s remaining pawns so that there were weaknesses everywhere. However, Tim battled stubbornly and even managed to reduce his losses to the extent that he reached a rook and pawns ending just one pawn down. Despite his efforts, Neil’s technique was up to the job and he converted to put Hebden in front with one game remaining.

In that last game though Adrian Dawson was doing very well against Richard Bedford. It seemed that Richard was in great danger of loosing but he fought on persistently and when Adrian unaccountably offered a draw from a position of superiority, Richard shook his hand enthusiastically. Hebden had just squeaked the win.

Here’s the match scorecard:

Hebden Bridge ‘A’ vs. Brighouse
P.Leonard ½ – ½ R.Broadbent (White)
J.Allan 0 – 1 N.Hudson (White)
N.Sykes 1 – 0 P.Whitehouse (White)
R.Bedford ½ – ½ A.Dawson (White)
N.Suttie 1 – 0 T.Pryke (White)
3 – 2

Then, last Wednesday, everyone held their breath to see how the league leaders would get on in their home tie against Belgrave ‘A’. Sadly the result never got posted on the league website as the match was postponed due to an unexpected clash with a Huddersfield League fixture we understand. Hopefully the postponement will soon be re-arranged.

All of this leaves Golden Lion top of the league on board count from Hebden Bridge ‘A’ but Huddersfield ‘A’ lie in third a point behind and with their postponed match still in hand. The lower end of the table has become quite congested following Hebden ‘B’s win at Halifax. Belgrave ‘A’ are on 5 points (with their game in hand) along with Hebden ‘B’. Then come Halifax ‘B’ on 4 points and Halifax ‘A’ on 3. Brighouse seem destined for the drop now as they remain on 0 but the second relegation spot could easily go to any of the others at this stage.

In the game viewer below you’ll find a number of games from round 6. As always, our thanks to the players who collected or sent their games through to us for publication. If anyone else would like to see their league games published here (we’ll publish whatever we receive) then please email your PGN files to hebdenbridgechessclub@gmail.com.

Before we go we should quickly add that the first game in this year’s handicap league took place last Monday too. This saw Belgrave sweep aside Halifax over the boards by a score of 5  –  1, however, such was the rating difference between the two sides that the two draws Halifax managed on boards 1 and 6 were sufficient to see Halifax steal the match 5 – 6 after the handicap bonus was applied!

Finally, this Monday was round 2 of the Calderdale Individual Championship. There will be a report on that here in due course.

Round 4 of Calderdale League 1 took place on Monday this week and, after a disappointing showing in round 3, both Hebden Bridge ‘A’ and Hebden Bridge ‘B’ were hoping to demonstrate their powers of recovery.

Pete Leonard’s Hebden Bridge ‘A’ team were put to the sword in brutal fashion by Huddersfield ‘A’ in their last match. Now, in a strange quirk of the fixture list this season, they were set to play their fourth consecutive home match of the season – they will in fact play six of their seven matches in the first half of the season at home. This schedule should give all the ‘A’ team members plenty of practice playing with the Black pieces before Christmas!

On Monday night they were up against a resurgent Belgrave ‘A’ side who have bolstered their line up considerably this season with the inclusion of John Morgan and Dave Patrick. The visitors have also shown an impressively consistent line up so far this season using only six players to date. On Monday they brought Ian Hunter, Morgan, Patrick, Malcolm Corbett and Karim Khan to the Trades Club. Pete meanwhile had strengthened his team compared to the one he’d fielded for the Huddersfield defeat. Andy Bak returned to play on board 1 and Nick ‘Syko’ Sykes was back on board 5 after performing strongly on top board for the ‘B’ team in the last two rounds.

As the two teams gathered for the match it was clear that the outcome was completely in the balance. On paper both sides had exactly the same average rating. Would the possession of the White pieces in these circumstances tip the balance in favour of the visitors?

The match turned out to be just as tight as the statistics would have suggested. On board 2, though the Johns Morgan and Allan played out an interesting and intricate dance with John Allan relinquishing a pawn in exchange for active piece play, the game ultimately ended in a draw at the point when it seemed inevitable that Black would win the pawn back.

On board 4, Neil Suttie seemed well set to open Hebden’s account as he got the better of Malcolm Corbett in the opening, winning first one, than a second pawn. However, in reaching out for a third he missed a tactic and had to relinquish a piece. The players reached an endgame in which Malcolm had a rook, bishop and two pawns against Neil’s rook and five pawns. The situation still looked dicey for White but Malcolm managed to stabiles the situation and, finally, they repeated moves and agreed a draw although the engine assesses the final position to be decisively in White’s favour with accurate play.

Andy Bak lost out to Ian Hunter on board 1 but Hebden struck back decisively with wins on boards 3 and 5 to secure the narrowest possible victory. Pete Leonard’s win demonstrated most aptly the natural justice inherent in the game as, having succumbed to an opening trap in horrifying fashion last time out against Huddersfield, he this time sprung a trap of his own to secure a decisive advantage, winning a piece. That he was able to do this against a player as well prepared as Dave Patrick just goes to show that it really can happen to anyone!

Meanwhile on board 5 the Syko was doing his dark work against one of his favourite customers, Karim Khan. Karim tends to play a hybrid Reti-Larsen’s opening system (with 1.Nf3 and 2.b3) when he thinks he’s facing a well booked-up opponent. The approach has worked for him in the past no doubt, but when you are up against someone as well versed in theory as Nick, playing offbeat lines can sometimes back fire. In this instance, even though he’d expected to face 1.e4, Nick wasn’t surprised by Karim’s opening choice and was able to gain a very comfortable position early on in the game as a result.

The middle game developed along purely positional lines and Nick gradually improved his position and simply outplayed Karim who was eventually forced into desperate measures as he gave up a whole rook for just two pawns. The hoped-for initiative never manifested itself and Nick simply handed back an exchange and defused White’s activity to win the game and secure the match for Hebden.

Here is the full match scorecard:

Hebden Bridge ‘A’ vs. Belgrave ‘A’
A.Bak 0 – 1 I.Hunter (White)
J.Allan ½ – ½ J.Morgan (White)
P.Leonard 1 – 0 D.Patrick (White)
N.Suttie ½ – ½ M.Corbett (White)
N.Sykes 1 – 0 K.Khan (White)
3 – 2

This excellent win put’s Hebden Bridge ‘A’ on three wins out of four. They are still most definitely in the title chase and will next play away at Golden Lion in Todmorden on the 13th of November.

Now to Martin Syrett’s Hebden Bridge ‘B’ team who, despite putting up good resistance in all three of their matches before this one, had failed to score a match point. They too were playing at home on Monday night against fellow back-markers Brighouse. This match represented Hebden’s best opportunity yet to get off the mark.

Brighouse brought pretty much their strongest line up of the season for a match that was vitally important for them too. On board 1 was Robert Broadbent, a player able to take on anyone in the league. Then came Nick Hudson, playing his first game of the season on board 2, Captain Paul Whitehouse on board 3 and Adrian Dawson and Tim Pryke on boards 4 and 5. To meet this team Martin fielded Andy Leatherbarrow, himself, Paul Gledhill, Neil Bamford and Terry Sullivan. With rating advantages on board 2, 3 and 5 and an evenly matched encounter in prospect on board 4, it looked like Hebden might have the edge.

Of course rarely do all the games in a match go according to the ratings. Such was the way of things in this one as Andy Leatherbarrow succeeded in drawing with Black against Robert Broadbent on board 1 despite giving away more than 25 rating points.

It was on the middle boards, where the games were most closely matched, that Hebden did their damage. Neil Bamford dispatched Adrian Dawson on board 4 and on board 3, new player Paul Gledhill took down Paul Whitehouse’s London System in confident fashion. He played sensibly until Paul misjudged a tactic that cost him a piece. The rest was pretty straight forward.

Finally, Captain Syrett won a nice game on board 2. For once it was his turn to face a gambit line as Nick Hudson met his Sicilian Defence with the Smith-Morra Gambit. It’s not in Martin’s nature to play passively to hang on to material and so he didn’t as he prioritized development and placed his pieces on active squares. He also hung onto the gambit pawn with the only cost being that his king remained in the centre of the board uncastled for a pretty long time. It turned out to be the safest place for it as Paul allowed Martin to exchange bishop for knight on g4 and opened the g-file by re-capturing with his g-pawn.

Martin continued to prioritise piece activity until move 22 when he finally decided it was safe for him to castle king’s side. By this time he had a strong positional advantage as well as an extra pawn. Finally, it was Martin and not Nick who got an unstoppable king’s side attack as he pushed his pawns with his opponent pretty much a passive by-stander. At the end Martin broke through decisively with his queen to finish the game in his favour. This gave Hebden ‘B’ their first win of the season.

Here is the scorecard:

Hebden Bridge ‘B’ vs. Brighouse
A.Leatherbarrow ½ – ½ R.Broadbent (White)
M.Syrett 1 – 0 N.Hudson (White)
P.Gledhill 1 – 0 P.Whitehouse (White)
N.Bamford 1 – 0 A.Dawson (White)
T.Sullivan 0 – 1 T.Pryke (White)
3½ – 1½

So, with both Hebden teams showing their ‘bouncebackability’ and keeping their respective hopes for the title and avoiding the drop alive, heads now turned to Halifax chess club where the other four teams in League 1 were gathered.

Halifax ‘A’ took on Huddersfield ‘A’ and Halifax ‘B’ welcomed Golden Lion. Both visiting sides were the only ones left undefeated in the league at the start of the night and, by the end of the evening, they both still were.

Huddersfield ‘A’ are perennial challenges for the title. In recent years though they have failed to get their strongest line up out consistently across the whole season. So far this time they have gotten stronger and stronger. Having defeated Hebden Bridge ‘A’ last time out now they were out to add Halifax ‘A’ to their list of victims and they fielded Greg Eagleton, Mitchell Burke and Dave Keddie together for the first time this season to help them do it.

In fact, in the end it was made to look easy as Greg beat Bill Somerset, Mitchell beat Richard Porter and Dave beat Carlos Velosa. Dave Tooley then beat Sam Scurfield and Steve Westmoreland took down Mac Randhawa to record the League’s first whitewash of the season.

Golden Lion meanwhile were given a head start as, for the second match in a row, their opponents defaulted a board to them. It could have been another overwhelming victory at the Lee Mount Club but in the end the visitors made hard work of it as they lost their first board of the season on board 5 where Marc Turu had a perfectly viable position against Ray Cully only to blunder to instant defeat.

The visitors did manage to win the remaining three games but they certainly didn’t have everything their own way. On board 2 Phil Cook was forced to toil and grind late into the evening against Scott Gornall before he finally converted a rook and pawn ending where he had an extra pawn. On board 3, Andrew Clarkson defeated Howard Wood quickly but realized the outcome could have been different if Howard had spotted a tricky defence that could have netted him a piece.

Finally, Dave Shapland won a piece very early in his game against Vivienne Webster but then played too casually and lost it back before going on to win the game for a second time in a tough knight, rook and pawns endgame when Vivienne got her knight trapped in enemy territory. The final score was 1 – 4.

All of this means that Golden Lion stay on top of the league table by just half a board point over Huddersfield ‘A’. Both have 8 points. Hebden Bridge ‘A’ are in third place with 6 points, Belgrave ‘A’ have 4 and then Halifax ‘A’, Halifax ‘B’ and Hebden Bridge ‘B’ all have 2, while Brighouse stay rooted to the foot of the table and have yet to score.

A number of games from this week’s fixtures can be found in the game viewer below. Thanks again to Nick Sykes for collecting and transcribing many of them for publication.

Next week sees the start of the 2017-18 edition of the Calderdale Individual Chess Championship. As in recent years, all rounds will take place at the Trades Club on the first Monday of the months of November, December, January, February and March. John Kerrane is the tournament organiser. If you haven’t yet entered and you would like to please call (01422 842 426) or email (kerranerie@btinternet.com) John before the end of the day on Sunday 5th of November.