Please note that the chess club will be closed on Tuesday 14th April because Ferryhill community centre is being used for another event.
Month: March 2015
Knights vs All Stars
The Bon Accord Knights vs Bon Accord All Stars match in the North East Scotland chess league was played at the Ferryhill community centre on Tuesday 24th March 2015, and ended up in a narrow 2.5 – 1.5 win for the All Stars. The All Stars very quickly gained the lead when Vagif Ramazanov checkmated Ricky Telford. The second game to finish was on board 4 where Dylan Bodrell successfully defended against John Ewen’s sacrificial attack, and was just material up. On board 2 Neil Irving overlooked a couple of tactical opportunities to win material against Alex Beaney and was then unable to win a rook and pawn ending with an extra pawn. The last game to finish was on board 1 where Daniel Maxwell was a piece and several pawns up, but under attack against Duncan Harwood. Eventually Duncan was able to win his material back with interest, and finished with an extra queen. Daniel has subsequently informed me that he was winning until near the end of the game, and described the finish as a “filthy rotten swindle”
| Bon Accord Knights | Bon Accord All Stars | ||||||
| 1 | B | Duncan Harwood | 1988 | 1 | 0 | Daniel Maxwell | 2081 |
| 2 | W | Neil Irving | 1644 | 0.5 | 0.5 | Alex Beaney | 1590 |
| 3 | B | Ricky Telford | 1639 | 0 | 1 | Vagif Ramazanov | 1398 |
| 4 | W | John Ewen | 1619 | 0 | 1 | Dylan Bodrell | 898 |
| 1.5 | 2.5 | ||||||
World Senior Team Championship
Richard Jennings has very kindly written the following report on the world senior team championships in Dresden:
It was with great pleasure that I represented Scotland at chess for the first time as part of the Scotland 2 Team at the World Seniors Championships at Dresden, held earlier this year.
There were several tournaments, the over 65s, the over 50s and a womens over 50’s. The women’s teams played with all the other over 50’s teams as a tournament within a tournament. The Russians won the over 65s convincingly with ageing GMs on all boards who were part of the Russian elite during the Fischer Spassky era. The strongest team in the over 50’s was England with Short, Nunn, Speelman and Arkell. Scotland’s first team comprised Colin McNab, Steven Mannion, Roddy Mackay and Douglas Bryson. Both England 1 and Scotland 1 lost to Slovakia however, who emerged as the tournament winners. Scotland 1 were finally paired against England 1 in the last round, effectively playing off for the Bronze position, but Scotland lost heavily in the end alas.
The Scotland 2 team is pictured below at dinner in the hotel.
From left, myself (Board 4), Alastair Dawson (Board 3), Alan Scrimgour (Board 2 and Captain) and Jim Stevenson (Board 1). The event took place over 9 rounds with 1 round per day and Scotland 2 finished 29th out of 45 teams, which was better than our ranking of 36th. We won 3 matches, lost 4 and drew 2. Inevitably there were a few points that got away and my feeling is that we could have done even better if we had not spoilt a few positions. My final score was 5/9 and our captain performed heroically on Board 2 with 6.5/9 and the others each scored 3/9.
In Round 1 we were paired against a strong team from Leipzig. My game went very well and I beat a 2100+ player in a very smooth game. My opponent played passively waiting for me to make a mistake I suspect and we reached the position below.
As Black I could not resist playing Bc5 + which was not a bad move, but the computer prefers pushing the h-pawn. Still, I invaded on the dark squares around White’s king and reached a won endgame. Just before the time control I had less than 1 minute for the last 2 moves and almost went pawn grabbing, but just hesitated and to my delight noticed that I actually had a forced mate, which I played. Nice one! The match ended 2-2, so we were off to a good start and paired against another strong team with a 2100 on bottom board.
In Round 2 we took a bit a beating and lost the match. On Move 18 I played Rf1-d1. You know it must be a poor move when Fritz says the best subsequent move is to return the Rook to f1! This was indeed an important point, where the position tipped from being pleasant to unpleasant for me. Still it was not lost. Fritz suggests 18. a4 as shown in the position below.
If the Queen captures the a-pawn then she will struggle to retreat after White plays 19. Rf2. For example, if the Queen captures the pawn on c4, she will not have any retreat squares after 20. Bf1 Qa4, 21. Ra1 Qb3, 22. Rb2. Pity I did not play this as I had seen the idea, but thought it better to play for the pawn push in the centre. After a couple more positional errors Black was firmly in control and won a good game. It is often said that players need to study their losses in order to improve, which I concur with for this game.
In Round 3 Scotland 2 played German Women 2. I played a good game and won a piece for a pawn and the position with White to play is shown below.
Sadly I played 43. Re1, whereas 43. Ke1 would have left Black with no more counterplay. After another couple of inaccuracies the position ended up such that I could not avoid perpetual check or material loss and so the game was drawn. Disappointing, but Scotland 2 won the match at least.
In Round 4 Scotland 2 played Belgium 2. After a very successful opening as Black I chose the wrong plan and lost. Another game to learn from unfortunately. The team lost too.
In Round 5 versus Sweden 1 I came out of the Opening with an uncomfortable position. This was the only Round in which my opening was poor, so my pre-tournament Opening preparation seems to have been good enough. Still I needed to have a long think about how best to proceed.
I came up with a plan to exchange my best piece, the fianchettoed Bishop on g2 for Black’s Knight on c6 which would spoil his Queen-side pawn structure. It looked as though Black would be able to launch a strong king-side attack following this exchange so I needed to have a plan in mind for how to defend the position below as I cannot risk taking the a5-pawn because Black will storm through with f5-f4. Here I saw that the pawn ram f2-f4 completely halts Black’s attack. A White piece on f4 cannot be dislodged, even if Black plays g6-g5 and in turn this means that Black cannot activate his major pieces, which are all blocked by his own f-pawn. Additionally, I reckoned the pair of White Knights could defend White’s King perfectly well in the absence of the White-square Bishop. The game proceeded
18. f4 g5
19. Nhg2 e4
20. Bxg7 Qxg7
And White went on to win owing to the shattered pawns on Black’s Queenside. A very successful plan in a dodgy position and my opponent told me after the match that he had assumed the Bishop capture on c6 would be fatal for White. He had not seen the effectiveness of the f4 pawn-ram! We lost the match however, but at least I was back to winning form after a string of disappointing results.
In Round 6 we played another German team from Berlin and the match was tied at 2-2. I lost after having a good position. The game should have been drawn, but I perhaps pressed too hard as I was a bit better and blundered. This was poor team play as my opponent had offered me a draw which would have been sufficient for Scotland 2 to win the match. Oh dear. Still, the team forgave me I think, but not my finest moment of the tournament.
Positions from my games of Rounds 7-9 form the basis of an article submitted to Chess Scotland for publication in their magazine. So I will not give away the plot here and encourage you to look out for this article. All the members of Scotland 2 have contributed to this article and I found the quality of the games and analysis to be very good. Suffice to say that I finished strongly with 2.5/3 and my wins in Rounds 7 and 8 both involved material sacrifices for the initiative, and both paid off.
I was strictly forbidden to take pictures with my Tablet device as I was a player and my Tablet has chess software installed. Still I asked nicely again in the last round after my game had finished and took a few pictures in the playing hall.
Next year’s event will be at another location just outside Dresden in the wine growing area. I suspect the venue can accommodate more teams because the organisers were overwhelmed by the number of entries and had to limit the event to 88 teams. The Scotland 2 team have expressed a desire to repeat this event in 2016. We shall see.
Bishops vs Sharks
The Bon Accord Bishops vs Teflon Sharks match in the North East Scotland league was played on Tuesday 17th March 2015. The result was a hard fought draw
| Bon Accord Bishops | Teflon Sharks | ||||||
| 1 | W | Mike Cavanagh | 1856 | 0 | 1 | Murad Abdulla | 1983 |
| 2 | B | Richard Jennings | 1820 | 1 | 0 | Jeremy Mitchell | 1812 |
| 3 | W | Hugh Holmes | 1724 | 1 | 0 | Ross Brennan | 1670 |
| 4 | B | Atharva Dabholkar | 810 | 0 | 1 | Alan Smith | 1603 |
| 2 | 2 | ||||||
Scottish National Chess League – Division 5 Champions
Bon Accord won against Wandering Dragons B and Prestwick Bon Accord in rounds five and six of the Scottish National Chess League. As a result Bon Accord have secured the division 5 title with a round to spare. Congratulations to the Adam, Hamish, Duncan, Murad and Tariq for an excellent result.
The results for rounds 5 and 6 were as follows:
Round 5
| Wandering Dragons B | Bon Accord | ||||||
| 1 | W | Donald Heron | 1796 | 0 | 1 | Adam Bremner | 2157 |
| 2 | B | Richard Carter | 1756 | 0 | 1 | Hamish Olson | 2087 |
| 3 | W | Chris Donkin | 1645 | 0.5 | 0.5 | Duncan Harwood | 1988 |
| 4 | B | William Falconer | 1405 | 0 | 1 | Murad Abdulla | 1983 |
| 5 | W | Adam Walkowiak | 1389 | 1 | 0 | Tariq Pasha | 1192 |
| 1.5 | 3.5 | ||||||
Round 6
| Bon Accord | Prestwick | ||||||
| 1 | W | Adam Bremner | 2157 | 0.5 | 0.5 | Mark Sanger | 2046 |
| 2 | B | Hamish Olson | 2087 | 1 | 0 | Bob Smith | 1302 |
| 3 | W | Duncan Harwood | 1988 | 1 | 0 | Craig Gillies | 1173 |
| 4 | B | Murad Abdulla | 1983 | 1 | 0 | Tom Laing | 1015 |
| 5 | W | Tariq Pasha | 1192 | 0.5 | 0.5 | Darren Gillies | 956 |
| 4 | 1 | ||||||
Full results can be seen on the Scottish National League website http://snclchess.co.uk/division-5-results/ .
Scottish Girls Championship 2015
The 2015 Scottish girls chess championship was held at Lathallan school, Brotherton castle, Johnshaven on Saturday March 14th.
Congratulations to Bon Accord club members Oishani Dutta for winning the Primary category with 6/7, and Stuthi Hegde for coming second in the girls championship with 3.5/5.
Further information is on the North East Scotland Junior chess association website here
Bishops vs Stonehaven (Allegro League)
The Bon Accord Bishops vs Stonehaven match in the North East Scotland allegro league was played on Tuesday 10th March 2015. The first round was drawn 2-2, the second a narrow 2.5-1.5 win for the Bishops.
| Bon Accord Bishops | Stonehaven | |||||
| 1 | Mike Cavanagh | 1710 | 2 | 0 | Keith Emery | 1617 |
| 2 | Richard Jennings | 1755 | 2 | 0 | Bruce Harrold | 1568 |
| 3 | Hugh Holmes | 1724 | 0.5 | 1.5 | Patrick Coffield | 1452 |
| 4 | Atharva Dabholkar | 810 | 0 | 2 | David Bridges | 1317 |
| 4.5 | 3.5 | |||||
Vineburgh Congress
Several Bon Accord players competed at the Vineburgh congress on the 7th and 8th of March in Irvine, Ayrshire.
In the Major (under 1850) section Callum Smith and Leston D’Costa scored 2.5/5, while Stuthi Hegde and Duncan Depasquale scored 1.5/5 – including a draw between Stuthi and Duncan.
Congratulations to all of them for a solid set of results in a very tough section.
World Senior Team Championship
The World Senior team championships were held from the 24th February till the 4th March 2015 in Dresden, Germany.
In the 50+ category the Scotland 1 team were in contention for the bronze medal, but lost to a very strong England 1 team in the last round and finished 7th. Scotland 2 finished in 29th position (they were seeded 36th) with 3 wins and 2 draws from 9 matches. Individually Bon Accord’s Richard Jennings scored an excellent 5/9 on board 4 for the Scotland 2 team.
Full results can be found here http://www.schachfestival.de/world-senior-team-championship-2015/rankings.html
Congratulations to both teams.
Teflon Sharks vs Newmachar (Allegro League)
The Teflon Sharks vs Newmachar match in the North East Scotland allergo league was played at Ferryhill Community Centre on Tuesday 3rd March 2015. The result was as follows:
| Teflon Sharks | Newmachar | |||||
| 1 | Murad Abdulla | 1818 | 2 | 0 | Joy Durno | 1693 |
| 2 | Jeremy Mitchell | 1731 | 0.5 | 1.5 | David Burke | 1526 |
| 3 | Ross Brennan | 1756 | 1.5 | 0.5 | Steve Sawaryn | 1394 |
| 4 | Alan Smith | 1602 | 2 | 0 | Ayo Suberu | U/G |
| 6 | 2 | |||||
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