Jun 162012
 

 

Shapland vs. Bagley. White has just played 29.Rh3 attacking the Black queen. What is Black’s best response?

At the Trades Club on Monday night Hebden Bridge ‘A’ team Captain, Dave Shapland, hosted the first of several analysis evenings being held as part of HBCC’s summer programme. He chose to analyse a game he played in the Leeds League earlier this season against Rose Forgrove’s Andy Bagley.

The game was played in an opening variation of the French Defence that Dave has had quite a bit of experience of contesting and he endeavoured to explain some of the strategic ideas behind it before the game took a rather chaotic turn. Neither side managed to castle and both players left pieces en prise when they were attacked on several occasions as the struggle for the initiative became the critical to the result.

All those participating in the session enjoyed spending quite some time delving into the complicated forcing variations that could have been selected by either player at various stages. In the end Black overlooked a startling defensive (in the diagram position shown) resource that was very hard to find and was on the receiving end of a king hunt that ended in checkmate.

For any of you who missed it Dave has provided the game and some (very!) extensive commentary for the game viewer below. But before you look at the game see if you can find Black’s best move in the position given at the beginning of this post. It’s a tough one!

Next week (the 18th) Matthew Parsons will be hosting an endgame workshop using an illustrative game of his own. Please be at the Trades Club by 8pm if you would like to take part in this session.

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Jun 132012
 

Matthew Parsons dropped just two draws from six games. This one was against the tournament winner Peter Shaw

Who says that the end of the league season means no more chess until September? Today I offer readers a veritable cornucopia of results from across Calderdale and beyond.

Brighouse Quickplay 2012

On Saturday Calderdale players (and a number from outside the area) gathered at Brighouse for the club’s annual Quickplay event. Unfortunately entry numbers were somewhat down this year (just 24 players entered), perhaps because of the clash between this event and the semi-final matches of the National County Championships in which Yorkshire had both U180 and U160 teams. Despite this there were a number of strong players at the event and, in the end, the strongest player on paper won the event. Peter Shaw of Wakefield scored 5½ out of 6 to take the first prize.

Pete Leonard and Nick Sykes analyse a game in between rounds. Pete scored 4 points and Nick scored 3.

Hebden Bridge were represented by three of last season’s title winning ‘A’ team and they all acquitted themselves outstandingly. Matthew Parsons was seeded 3 in the initial draw and remained unbeaten by winning four games and drawing two against the two players seeded above him. This was enough to give him second place on his own with 5 out of 6. This was an excellent result. Congratulations Matthew!

Pete Leonard scored 4 out of 6 (beating the 4th seed in the process) and Nick Sykes scored 3 out of 6 a result which included a win against Brighouse’s strongest player Robert Broadbent. Well done to both Pete and Nick for their strong showing.

Nick and Pete have analysed and annotated all of their games from the competition and these can be found in the game viewer at the end of this post. Matthew has also provided us with the score from his win against Jim Vickery.

Individual Knockout Results

Over the last two weeks the Calderdale Summer Knockout Competitions have begun in earnest. A number of Individual encounters were decided over the last two weeks including all the round 1 match-ups below:

S.Priest 0 — 1 D.Ursal
J.Nicholson 0 — 1 A.Dawson
D.Milton 0 — 1 N.Sykes
M.Syrett 1 — 0 J. Aldridge
A.Leatherbarrow 1 — 0 B.Joyce
J.Todd 0 — 1 J.P.Ellis
P.Rawlings 0 — 1 T.Webster
M.Parsons 1 — 0 D.Crampton

There were several byes in the draw in round 1 and so there are still plenty of games left to play. Anyone interested in seeing the full second round draw can take a look at the “Summer Events” page for more details.

Juniors at the Megafinal

Next up, 14 of our club’s juniors were in action this weekend as they travelled for the area Megafinals of the National Championships. There were several winning performances for Hebden Bridge with Kyle Sharpe winning the boys U10, Hephzi Leatherbarrow taking the girls U11 title and Leona Sharpe coming joint 1st in the girls U13. John Kerrane has written a full report and listed all results on an excellent day out in Sheffield. For details see the “Juniors” page.

Team Knockout Underway

John Kerrane reports on Hebden Bridge ‘B’s opening fixture in the summer team knockout competition.

On Monday evening, Hebden Bridge ‘B’ opened the Calderdale League 2012 Summer Team Knock-Out Competition with an away match against Todmorden ‘B’. It was an ironic pairing, as Todmorden ‘B’ had just been promoted to the Calderdale League first division, passing Hebden Bridge ‘B’ on the way down from the first division to the second.

The handicap system left the Hebden Bridge ‘B’ players short of time on all boards, none more so than Neil Bamford on board 5, who had only ten minutes to play his game against Bill Joyce. He was soon in trouble, but fought his way out to an early win. He was soon joined by John Kerrane on board 4, whose opponent, Tod B captain J. P. Ellis, chose a disastrous plan against the Catalan opening, and lost quickly. With two wins already achieved, the pressure was off the senior players, and Hebden Bridge ‘B’ finally won with a score of 4½-½.”

The individual results were:

Todmorden ‘B’ vs. Hebden Bridge ‘B’
D. Milton ½ – ½ A. Leatherbarrow
T. Webster 0 — 1 M. Syrett
M. Huett 0 — 1 D. Sugden
J. P. Ellis 0 — 1 J. Kerrane
B. Joyce 0 — 1 N. Bamford
½ – 4½

Hebden Bridge ‘A’ are the defending champions in this competition and they begin their title defence with a re-run of last year’s final as they travel to Halifax ‘A’ on the 25th of June.

Thats all for now, below is a collection of games from the competitions mentioned in this post.

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