Hebden Bridge Chess Club

Ingmar Bergmans’ ‘The Seventh Seal’ contains the most iconic chess game in cinematic history. At it’s heart Max Von Sydow’s character chooses to answer our question for today: “Chess or extinction?” with the answer “Chess”. Which of us wouldn’t do the same?

On Monday night patrons of the Golden Lion in Todmorden were greeted with this seemingly stark ultimatum as they entered the premises. The occasion was the first local derby match of the Calderdale Evening Chess League season between Hebden Bridge ‘A’ and Hebden Bridge ‘B’ and the alternative on offer was an ‘Extinction Rebellion’ group meeting taking place upstairs. Our genial host merrily posited these two options from behind the bar to any customer who she didn’t really recognise. It didn’t fail to raise a chuckle from the chess players, who were in the know, and quizzically alarmed looks from genuine newcomers.

It’s the kind of scenario that can only really happen out at the Golden Lion. On Monday what could turn out to be one of the most serious and earnest chess matches of the season was punctuated by musical interludes from the bar next door. Funky breaks and wailing guitar solos were in plentiful supply. It could have been off-putting (and possibly would have been at another venue) but at the Golden Lion pretty much all the players seemed to be bobbing their heads in appreciation and even humming the tunes to themselves at some point. It certainly didn’t seem to adversely affect the standard of the chess being played, which was pretty high.

Last year, the Hebden Bridge based team beat the Todmorden based team not only in the corresponding fixture but to the title too. The Golden Lion fraternity had a desperately awful start to the season last year, drawing one and losing four of their first five matches. They were not helped by having some lower rated players on boards 4 and 5 early for the early matches before the roster stabilised. This time around, with Hebden Bridge ‘C’ having been relegated last year and a few new players arriving at the club, the ‘B’ team is stronger. Much stronger. Ferociously strong. The five players in the line-up on Monday sported an average ECF rating of 174.8!! Those five in order were Martyn Hamer; the Calderdale Individual Champion of the last three seasons, Phil Cook; Andrew Clarkson; Sam Swain and Richard ‘Beaky’ Bedford. It’s got to be one of the strongest lines-ups ever fielded in the league – certainly it is just about the strongest your correspondent has ever seen.

The reigning champions had strengthened their line up too! They boasted an average rating of 172.8 and were comprised of Matthew Parsons; Calderdale League debutant, Stavros Pantazopoulos; Dave Shapland, Andy Leatherbarrow and Neil Suttie. With the two teams so closely matched it was bound to be a tight, tense and enthralling match. It also promised to be a very late night, and that was exactly how it turned out.

The ‘A’ team playing White, did their best to try and exploit their ‘advantage’ in the early stage of the evening. On board 1, Matthew and Martyn duelled in Matthew’s favorite London System. The early exchanges were very cagey and Matthew appeared to get very little from the opening despite his best efforts. On board 2 it was a different story as Phil met Stavro’s 1.d4 and 2.c4 with a very unorthodox approach. It cost him a pawn early on and it wasn’t clear if it was a gambit or a blunder, but it certainly led to some unclear and unusual positions. More importantly, it caused Stavros to start thinking hard and, with him playing the relatively short evening league time limits for the first time, he soon got very behind on the clock.

Dave Shapland sprang a surprise on Andrew Clarkson on board 3 – well maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t – as he decided to take on Andrew’s Grunfeld rather than having yet another go at his Pirc which he has never yet been able to defeat. Inspired by some recent games from the FIDE World Cup, Dave played the first moves of the mainline exchange variation and then selected an offbeat continuation with 8.Bb5+. He succeeded in stabilising his pawn centre and getting his pieces developed onto active squares in the opening while Andrew was given some problems to solve from the early stages.

Andy Leatherbarrow and Sam Swain contested an English Opening in which the centre of the board soon become rather blocked with pawns. Both players switched their efforts to counter attacks on opposite flanks with Sam playing f5 and Andy playing b4 to try and break the position open in their favour.
Finally, on board 5, Neil and Beaky contested the latter’s favoured Nimzowitsch Defence. This too was a very tense game in the early stages with Beaky gradually manoeuvring his pieces over to the king’s side to build what looked like a dangerous attack.

For much of the night it was really difficult to see which way the match would go as all the boards seemed rather unclear. Slowly but surely though, the games started to resolve themselves. The first to finish was the board 2 match where Stavros found himself with a rook and pawn versus Phil’s knight and bishop. He also found himself very short of time as early as move 20! Phil too had consumed a fair deal of time and the end of the game demonstrated the tension of the encounter and the pressure of the clock as Stavros overlooked a move that would have secured him the advantage and instead actually handed Phil with a winning opportunity. However, Phil in turn missed his opportunity as he opted to sacrifice a bishop to force a perpetual check and the game ended abruptly in a draw. This was a rather curious but by no means bad game.

The game on board 1 finished next with both players choosing not to take any undue risks although it looked like they explored some interesting possibilities in the post-mortem. There’s a health respect between Matthew and Martyn who have both won games from each other in the past. This time it was a draw.

The home side took the lead shortly afterwards when Sam beat Andy on board 4. In a very complicated middle game, Sam finally succeeded in opening up the position in the centre and damaging the White king’s protective shield. Meanwhile, Andy opened the b-file for his heavy pieces. It would appear that this scenario favoured Black because, by the time Andy had decided on a tactical approach with 24.Re6!? it looks like he was already in trouble. Sam found the right solution to the problem and emerged an exchange up. Andy didn’t have enough compensation and his king was too exposed to try and mount a serious counter-attack. Sam snuffed out any counter play and mopped up efficiently.

I often think you can measure the intensity and drama of a chess game by the number of pints consumed by the players. The game between Neil and Beaky was clearly a ‘six pint’ game, which says it all really.

The champions struck back on board 3 where Dave’s initiative against Andrew built up into a strong attack. Andrew may have missed a couple of fleeting opportunities to defend himself more robustly but generally the position was much harder for Black to play than White and once Dave had been able to initiate a rook lift and transfer his queen to the h-file it was all over bar the king hunt as Andrew’s monarch staggered drunkenly up the board as far as d5 in the vain hope of finding a refuge.

And that meant that the outcome of the match would be settled by the board 5 encounter. As the rest of the players gathered around it was far from clear who was better if anyone. Both Neil and Richard burned their clocks down to almost nothing before the time control and then almost as soon as they’d had their 15 minutes added, they slowed down their rate of play and got into time trouble again!

It’s clear from the game analysis that the pendulum swung between these two several times during the game but in the end the game and the match was decided when Beaky over-stepped the time limit and sportingly pointed it out himself. By that point Neil seemed to have secured a winning advantage anyway.

Here’s the final score card from what was a fabulous match full of interesting play and you can find four of the five games with some annotations in the game viewer at the bottom of this post.

Hebden Bridge ‘B’ vs Hebden Bridge ‘A’
M.Hamer ½ – ½ M.Parsons (W)
P.Cook ½ – ½ S.Pantazopoulos (W)
A.Clarkson 0 – 1 D.Shapland (W)
S.Swain 1 – 0 A.Leatherbarrow (W)
R.Bedford 0 – 1 N Suttie (W)
2 – 3

Elsewhere on Monday night Huddersfield ‘A’ were busy putting Brighouse to the sword in much the same fashion that Hebden Bridge ‘A’ had done in round 1. The score was ½ – 4½ and this time it was Robert Broadbent on board 1 who salvaged Brighouse’s pride by holding Greg Eagleton to a draw. Nick Sykes, Alec Ward, Steve Westmoreland and David Booth all won their games.

At the Lee Mount Cllub in Halifax, Halifax ‘A’ were rustling up a highly convincing victory against last season’s runners up, Belgrave ‘A’. Certainly, Belgrave were weaker for this match than they had been for their first-round match, missing Tony Slinger and Colin Proctor as they were. Into the breach stepped Malcolm Corbett and Steve Harrington. Halifax meanwhile welcomed back Richard Porter to board 3 and this strengthened their line up enough for them to be higher rated on all five boards. The home team won on all three of the top boards as Darwin Ursal, Winston Williams and the afore mentioned Richard Porter beat John Morgan, Dave Patrick and Malcolm Corbett respectively. Karim Khan and Steve Harrington held their adversaries, Carlos Velosa and Vivienne Webster to draws as Halifax romped home 4 – 1.

All these results mean that after two rounds, only Hebden Bridge ‘A’ and Halifax ‘A’ have perfect scores and 7½ board points each. Huddersfield and Belgrave ‘A’ have two points each and the other three are yet to score although both Hebden Bridge ‘B’ and Belgrave ‘B’ have both got a game in hand.

In round 3 it will be the reigning champions turn to sit it out as Halifax will be given the chance to go top on their own if they beat Belgrave ‘B’ away.

Calderdale Evening Chess League 2 got off the ground on Monday night. Photo Credit: liftmeupletmefall’s Flickr photo stream

The four teams in the Calderdale Evening Chess League played their first fixtures of the season on Monday night. They are going to become very familiar with each other this season as, with such a small number of teams in the league they will play each other four times – twice home and away. It could be quite a tight league although, on the basis of the first round of fixtures, one would imagine that Huddersfield ‘B’ are the favorites to win the title and take the sole promotion spot this year.

Indeed, Huddersfield made pretty light work of what looked like a reasonable Halifax ‘B’ team on Monday as they cruised to a 1 – 4 victory at the Lee Mount Club. Leo Keely set the tone for the visitors with a win over Richard Porter on board 1 but the David Gray, Alec Ward and John Hill also won their games against Pete Moss, David Rowley and Barry Wadsworth respective. Only the home sides fourth board, Andrew White, managed to salvage something for them with a win over Simon Anscombe.

Across the otherside of Halifax, Belgrave ‘C’ were hosting Hebden Bridge ‘C’ in what turned out to be a much tighter match which was edged by the hosts by 3 – 2. The visitors appeared to out grade their opponents on all boards but board 5 based on their ECF ratings, but, as not everyone in League 2 has an ECF rating yet (remember last season that League 2 matches were not rated) the line ups on paper are not always going to be what they seem in League 2 this season.

On board 1 Pete Leonard looked likely to win his game when a grabbed the gambit pawn in a Scandinavian Defence and seemed to be able to hold on to it for quite some time. However, his opponent, Dave Colledge, always had good piece activity for his sacrificed material and saved himself with a perpetual check.

The board 2 game saw Neil Bamford miss a draw  and stumble to defeat in the endgame against Les Johnson in a game where Neil’s early advantage slipped away whilst on board 3, John Kerrane blundered in a promising position and left himself a pawn down with no compensation against Angel Gonzalez. Angel went on to grind out the win.

Paul Gledhill won the only game of the night for the visitors playing a very unbalanced attacking game on board 4 against Paul Edwards. He finished with a spectacular ‘White to play and win’ type position.

Finally, on board 5, young Zora Sandhu held Paul Jacobs to a draw.

Here’s the final match scorecard:

Belgrave ‘C’ vs Hebden Bridge ‘C’
D.Colledge ½ – ½ P.Leonard (W)
L.Johnson 1 – 0 N.Bamford (W)
A.Gonzalez 1 – 0 J.Kerrane (W)
P.Edwards 0 – 1 P.Gledhill (W)
P.Jacobs ½ – ½ Z.Sandhu (W)
3 – 2 

Readers would be well within their rights to wonder if your editor had been kidnapped by aliens such has been the paucity of updates here in the last five weeks. We are pleased to inform you that we are alive and well but have been busy!

There is so much to catch up on but we’re going to keep our discipline and report on one round of the Calderdale League at a time. In our last post we recorded Hebden Bridge ‘B’s downfall to their ‘A’ team colleagues which enabled Belgrave ‘A’ to hit the front in the League 1 title race, as well as a League 2 update and the results of Round 4 of the Calderdale Individual Championship. So, picking up where we left off, let’s recount the action from Round 10 of League 1 which took place in the week commencing February 11th.

Newly minted League leaders Belgrave ‘A’ faced a potential banana skin in he shape of third placed Halifax ‘A’ away. The top two boards looked fairly evenly matched but on the lower boards Belgrave had strong rating advantages. In the end it was a one-sided affair with the visitors achieving a compelling 1 – 4 victory. John Morgan beat Bill Somerset on board 1 and Tony Slinger and Richard Bowman took full points off Carlos Velosa and Vivienne Webster respectively. The other two games were drawn.

Hebden Bridge ‘A’ continued their sparkling form at home to their ‘C’ team colleagues with a comprehensive 4½ – ½ victory. Andy Leatherbarrow managed to hold a draw against Andrew Clarkson on board 1 (a highly creditable result) but the rest of the team were swept aside. Here is the full match scorecard:

Hebden Bridge ‘A’ vs. Hebden Bridge ‘C’
A.Clarkson ½ – ½ A.Leatherbarrow (W)
M.Hamer 1 – 0 M.Syrett (W)
P.Cook 1 – 0 N.Bamford (W)
S.Whitehead 1 – 0 P.Gledhill (W)
A.Swales 1 – 0 P.Dickinson (W)
4½ – ½

The other match played on Monday the 11th was between relegation rivals Huddersfield ‘B’ and Belgrave ‘B’. This was a really tight match on paper and it proved to be the case over the board as well. There were draws on boards 1, 2 and 4 and then the sides traded wins on board 3, where Belgrave’s Gordon Farrar beat David Gray, and board 5, where Huddersfield’s captain, Alec Ward beat Les Johnson to save a vital draw for his team. That result left both team locked in a struggle to avoid the second relegation spot.

The last match of the round was played on Wednesday the 13th at the Lindley Liberal Club in Huddersfield where the hosts, Huddersfield ‘A’ entertained Hebden Bridge ‘B’ who were aiming to bounce back from only their second loss of the season in round 9.

In days gone by these two clubs have staged some epic clashes. This time around though the match was something of a damp squib as Huddersfield were under strength and indeed had to forfeit the bottom board. The visitors then built on their hosts generosity with three more wins and a draw to take the match comfortably.

Sam Swain got the ball rolling with a quick win on board 4 against Brendan Briggs and then Dave Shapland took down Steve Westmoreland on board 2 when the Huddersfield man miscalculated a forcing sequence that it turned out would end with him losing his queen or getting check mated. Pete Leonard then made it 0 – 4 when he defeated Amin Hossain.

The last game of the night went on to the end of the evening as Matthew Parsons tried to force a win through against Greg Eagleton. A fascinating endgame struggle ensued where Matthew had three pawns against Greg’s lone bishop. Eagleton was down to vapours on his clock when he finally forced Matthew to concede the only half Hebden gave up in the match. The scorecard is below:

Huddersfield ‘A’ vs. Hebden Bridge ‘B’
G.Eagleton ½ – ½ M.Parsons (W)
S.Westmoreland 0 – 1 D.Shapland (W)
A.Hossain 0 – 1 P.Leonard (W)
B.Briggs 0 – 1 S.Swain (W)
DEFAULT 0 – 1 N.Suttie (W)
½ – 4½

The game viewer at the end of this post below has a number of games from this match in it.

These results left Belgrave ‘A’ top of the League with 17 points, Hebden Bridge ‘B’ in second on 16 and Halifax ‘A’ are in third on 11 points a position they share with Hebden Bridge ‘A’ who after starting the season with a drawn 1 lost 5 record have won all five matches since to reach 50% for the season.

At the bottom Hebden Bridge ‘C’ looked doomed on 3 points. But then it’s a bun fight as Huddersfield ‘B’ have 8 points and Huddersfield ‘A’ and Belgrave ‘B’ both have 7 points. Any of these three teams could join Hebden ‘C’ in the drop to League 2.

Having worked so hard to catch up with our reports, we have fallen behind again. Never mind, we’ll get back on track again soon enough.

Let’s begin with a recap of the 8th round of fixtures in Calderdale League 1. These were played on the 14th of January and, naturally, featured a whole host of derby matches between sides from the same clubs. In fact three of the four matches played were derbies and two of those three ended in heavy defeats.

We’ll start though with the closest fought of the derby matches. Hebden Bridge ‘C’ took on Hebden Bridge ‘B’ at the Trades Club and both sides found themselves somewhat depleted in number. Hebden ‘C’ were short of players and, as the ‘A’ team were also missing a player, the ‘B’ team loaned out Pete Leonard to the ‘A’ team rather than have a player taking a default and not getting a game.

That meant that a four-a-side match with Hebden ‘C’ lining up with Andy Leatherbarrow, Martin Syrett, Paul Gledhill and Neil Bamford while the ‘B’ team had Matthew Parsons, Dave Shapland, Sam Swain and Neil Suttie. On paper it looked like it should have been straightforward for the ‘B’s but it turned out to be a tough battle.

Matthew defeated Andy on board 1 in relatively smooth fashion. Of course, the game saw a London System on the board and Andy had come prepared for a battle in that system. Early on in the opening he appeared to be doing well but he was gradually out played in the middle game and made a few tactical mistakes which curtailed the game mid-evening.

Sam Swain also had a fairly comfortable night on board 3 against Paul Gledhill. Sam opted for the Grand Prix Attack and, like Matthew, took full advantage of some tactical oversights to ease past his opponent.

The match was already almost in the bag but on the last two boards the ‘B’ team stumbled. First, Neil Suttie lost a piece against Neil Bamford. He opted to go all in and try to confuse his opponent but Bamford held fast, defused the danger and simplified the position to force resignation. This was an excellent win for Neil who has had an excellent season for the ‘C’ team collecting 6½/8 so far.

Finally, it came down to the game between the two Captains. Dave took charge of the game early in the opening and seemed to be building an overwhelming attack. However, Martin hung on determinedly and when Dave couldn’t find the right way to prosecute his attack, he developed his own dangerous counter play. The game simplified and the danger receded. With equal material on both sides and the only chance for a win requiring some level of risk, Dave accepted Martin’s draw offer to ensure that at least the match was won for the league leaders.

Here is the final match scorecard:

Hebden Bridge ‘C’ vs Hebden Bridge ‘B’
A.Leatherbarrow 0 – 1 M.Parsons (W)
M.Syrett ½ – ½ D.Shapland (W)
P.Gledhill 0 – 1 S.Swain (W)
N.Bamford 1 – 0 N.Suttie (W)
DEFAULT 0 – 0 DEFAULT
1½ – 2½

Hebden Bridge ‘A’ continued their resurgence in the only non-derby match of the round as they crushed third-placed Halifax ‘A’ at the Lee Mount Club. Admittedly they had their strongest line up of the season with Phil Cook and Mick Connor missing they were replaced by even stronger players in the form of Chris Bak and Pete Leonard. Together with Andrew Clarkson and Martyn Hamer on the top two boards Chris and Pete won their games as the visitors swept aside Bill Somerset, Richard Porter, Carlos Velosa and Vivienne Webster. Only Sam Scurfield could muster a consolation point against Andy Swales on board 5. Here is the match card:

Halifax ‘A’ vs Hebden Bridge ‘A’
W.Somerset 0 – 1 A.Clarkson (W)
R.Porter 0 – 1 M.Hamer (W)
C.Velosa 0 – 1 C.Bak (W)
V.Webster 0 – 1 P.Leonard (W)
S.Scrufield 1 – 0 A.Swales (W)
1 – 4

With this win Hebden ‘A’ climbed further up the table and away from the relegation zone into a share of 4th and 5th places.

That climb up the table was made possible in part by Huddersfield ‘A’s defeat to their ‘B’ team rivals for the second time this season. Dave Keddie, Steve Westmoreland and Kyle Sharpe were held to draws by Leo Keely, Simon Anscombe and David Gray respectively and then the tail end of the ‘A’ team collapsed as Granville Boot beat Robert Sutcliffe and Alec Ward beat Craig Sharpe. This was a fine win for Huddersfield ‘B’ to boost their survival chances.

In the final match of the round Belgrave ‘B’ hosted their ‘A’ team and were roundly thrashed for their troubles. Gordon Farrar saved a half on board 1 against John Morgan but after that it was slaughter as Dave Patrick, Tony Slinger, Peter Hughes and Karim Khan put Mike Barnett, Keith Marsh, Les Johnson and Angel Gonzales to the sword. This result ensured that Belgrave maintained their hot pursuit of Hebden ‘B’ in second place in the table.

You’ll find some of the games from round 8 in the game viewer below.