A League Showdown 20.12.07

David Lettington and Matt Bunn clash heads in the A League. A great game between two chess generals, looked to be going Davids way until some great sacrifices from Matt forced a well deserved draw. Maybe King to d5 (instead of h4, move 47) to support the a file passed pawns could have placed the advantage back with David?

A League Results Table

Latest results...David takes A-league lead

The latest results are as follows:

A-league:
David Lettington 1-0 Dean Thompson
Nick Allen 1-0 Matt Gazes
Len Hammond 0-1 Henry Williams

B-league:
Neil Miners 1-0 Tim Gazes
Arjun Toor 1-0 Jason Boyes
Ben Edwards 1-0 John Morgan

So, David Lettington takes a clear lead in the A-league, and Henry Williams got his season off to a winning start. There was shock result in the B-league, as the leader John Morgan lost to newcomer Ben Edwards. Well done Ben!

Matt scores a quick win.

Here is a quick win from Matt Bunn in the recent Crowborough Rapidplay tournament.

The first eight moves are pretty even, but 9.Ng5 is not very useful and Matt takes full advantage with a quick build up on the Kingside. 14.Bd2 is a clear error, as 14.f3 or 14.h3 are necessary. The unnatural looking 15.Nge4 is better than Nf3 as Matt unleashes a devastating series of blows culminating in 18...g5 which forces his opponent's resignation.

Simultaneous display - Saturday 27th October

FIDE Master Steve Giddins is set to give a simultaneous display at Snodland United Church on Saturday 27th October, 2.45pm start. Steve will play up to 20 opponents, if you would like to play, please e-mail david_lettington@hotmail.com . There is a fee of three pounds to play. Spaces are limited, so get in early!

Anand set to become new World Champion

Vishy Anand takes a one point lead into the final round of the World Chess Championship. His only challenger is Boris Gelfand, who needs to win in the final round against tail-ender Alexander Morozevich, whilst hoping that Vishy loses to Hungarian Peter Leko. Anand fought extremely hard against Alexander Grischuk (picture left) in round 13 to hold a draw in a rook and pawn endgame that it looked like he might lose.

John extends B-league lead, David tops A-league

John Morgan scored a second consecutive win to extend his league in the B-league. David Lettington managed a win with the black pieces in a tense game with Bob Fenn (shown below). David Nicholls won his first game in the A-league against Neil Miners.

In the game below, David gets an advantage after 21. Nd3, which drops a pawn after the exchanges. Bob probably should have played 21. dxc6 before putting the knight on d3. However, Bob then played very aggressively and built huge pressure down the g-file. David played too passively and allowed Bob back into the game. Both players were quite short of time as the last few moves were played and Bob's attack couldn't quite break through. Instead of 44. Qh3, Bob could have forced a draw with 44. Bxh7 Kxh7 45. Rxg7+ Rxg7 46. Qh3+ Kg8 47. Qe6+ which forces a draw by repetition. A very exciting game.

John leads B-league

John Morgan (right) scored a win over Luke Chapman to take an early lead in the B-league, with 1.5 out of 2.

Games this week were as follows:

A-league:
Dean Thompson 0-1 Matt Bunn

B-league:
Luke Chapman 0-1 John Morgan
Malcolm Stokes 1-0 Arjun Toor
Tim Gazes 0-1 Ben Stokes
Jason Boyes 0-1 Neil Miners

Results from Crowborough Rapidplay

Three Snodland players competed in the Crowborough Rapidplay tournament on Sunday 23rd September. Games were limited to 30 minutes per player for the whole game, making a maximum of one hour's play per game; with six games in the day. Matt Bunn scored 3 out of 6, employing lots of experimental opening play against higher graded opponents. Bob Fenn scored an excellent win in the first round, forking his opponent's King and Queen. David Lettington scored 3.5 out of 6, including a win against a much higher graded opponent, which is given below.

White's twelfth move, e4, is a mistake, he seems to have missed the possibility of Ba6 after the exchanges. It is necessary to play 12.cxb5 or Re1 to maintain an equal game.

World Championship Results

After 3 rounds, the World Chess Championship is led jointly by Vladimir Kramnik and Viswanathan Anand, who played a tense game against each other in the third round.

Kramnik seems to be the in form player, playing a speculative knight sacrifice to create complications and beat Alexander Morozevich in round 2. Kramnik then seemed to have a slim chance of beating Anand with the black pieces after going a pawn up. However, Anand defended extremely well and managed to hold the draw.

Kramnik - Morozevich from round 2 is given below. White's 8th move is a novelty, but it's his 13th move, exd5!!, that simply allows his knight to be taken and steers the game into very complicated and unbalanced lines. Although Morozevich could possibly have saved a draw with 21...Qd5, it was nevertheless an impressive win from Kramnik.

FM Steve Giddins to give simul

Fide Master Steve Giddins has agreed to give a simultaneous display at the club at 2.45pm on Saturday 27th October. More details to follow.

Game results - 12th September 2007

There were some exciting games played this week, to kick off the new season.

Nick Allen and Matt Bunn were involved in the longest tussle of the evening, which came down to a tense Queen and pawn endgame with Matt a pawn up. Matt managed to convert his advantage into a win after a good fight from Nick.

Arjun Toor and John Morgan played a good game where John seemed to have a clear advantage but he slightly misread the position and Arjun managed to achieve a stalemate and so the game was drawn.

Matt Gazes tried and interesting idea in the opening against David Lettington, where he had open attacking lines towards but the black King, although this left him with two sets of doubled pawns.

Chess Club AGM - Thursday 6th September

The Chess Club Annual General Meeting takes place on Thursday 6th September, 7.45pm at The Cricket Pavilion. It is one of the few club nights each year where not much chess gets played!

We are set to decide how many teams to field in Kent competitions and the structure of our club competitions.

World Chess Championship to start soon.

The World Chess Championship is set to start in a few days time. The newly re-unified undisputed world chess title is held by Vladimir Kramnik of Russia (shown left), a title he won less than year ago, winning a 12 game match against the then world-ranked number one, Veselin Topalov (Bulgaria). However, Kramnik has held a version of the world title since beating Garry Kasparov (Russia) in 2000, a title he defended against Peter Leko (Hungary) in 2004.

This year the World Championship is to be held in Mexico City, and is in tournament format. After this year, the World Championship will return to the traditional match format.

Eight players have qualified to play in Mexico, (name, country, Elo rating, world ranking below):

Viswanathan Anand, India, 2792, 1st

Vladimir Kramnik, Russia, 2769, joint 2nd

Alexander Morozevich, Russia, 2762, 4th

Levon Aronian, Armenia, 2761, 5th

Peter Leko, Hungary, 2738, 8th

Peter Svidler, Russia, 2736, 9th

Boris Gelfand, Israel, 2733, 13th

Alexander Grischuk, Russia, 2717, 16th


Current favourites are Kramnik and Anand. 13th September is the first day of play and results can be followed on http://www.chessmexico.com/

Come and join us! New members welcome!

Snodland Chess Club always welcomes new people, whether you are 8 years old or 80, a complete beginner or experienced player.

The new chess "season" is about to begin, so now is a great time to come and visit us!

We play lots of friendly games as well as competitively in the Kent leagues. We can provide free coaching for beginners and we are happy to give lots of advice to new players.

So, come along and see if you can increase your brainpower! Details of how to find us are on the right hand side of this page.

English Small Club of the Year Award!

Snodland Chess Club has been awarded the English Chess Federation Small Club of the Year award.

The ECF gave the award for the rapid expansion and development of the club since its inception in 2003. The award will be presented to the club later in the year.

The club hopes to build on this award, by running 4 teams in the Kent Leagues next year, instead of our current one team.

The club will continue to run junior coaching sessions and we hope to encourage many new players to the club over the next year. Beginners are especially welcome!

Jovanka Houska delivers lecture at club.

International Master Jovanka Houska delivered a superb lecture at the club, by demonstrating her win against Grandmaster Jonathan Speelman.

Jovanka first ran a coaching session for junior players (photo right) and then presented prizes to winners of this year's club competitions. After this she demonstrated various techniques in pawn and Queen endgames that enabled her to defeat Speelman, a former World Championship Semi-Finalist.

Winners of this year's club competitions were:
Best Game:

Bob Fenn (photo right)

A-league:

Bob Fenn

B-league:

Soriah Williams

Intro League:

Matthew Gazes

Challenge Cup:

David Lettington

Speed Chess Challenge:

David Lettington

Speed Chess Final ends in tense thriller!

The Speed Chess Championship ended in a tense final, as David Lettington made a surprise rook sacrifice to force checkmate.

Matt Bunn, the other finalist and last year's winner, played a very sharp line of Dutch Defence as David unusually played 1.d4 as an opening move.

The game became a battle along the central files, with Kings castled on opposite sides of the board. David was able to swing his pieces into attack and eventually broke through Matt's defences with only seconds left on the clock.

However, David was lucky to be in the Final, as he had a completely lost position against up and coming player Matthew Gazes (picture left). Matt had outplayed David entirely and deserved to win, but unfortunately his time ran out. Perhaps Matthew Gazes will be next year's winner?

Winners of the Speed Chess Championship so far are:
2004 Nick Allen
2005 Neil Miners
2006 Matt Bunn
2007 David Lettington

Challenge Cup Final Result

The 4th Challenge Cup Final ended in victory for David Lettington.

Len Hammond (photo right) survived some pressure in the opening stage of the game to fight back stronlgy and gain the initiative. However, as time passed, Len wasn't able to find the right moves to break through and David took the opportunity to counter attack.

Winners of the competition so far have been:
2004 Nick Allen
2005 Nick Allen
2006 David Lettington
2007 David Lettington

National Club Championship Semi-Final

Well, you can't win them all!

Snodland travelled up to Oxford to play in the Semi-Final of the National Chess Club Championship U100 section, but unfortunately we lost to Magdalen College School by the narrow margin of 2.5 to 1.5.

Matt Bunn scored a nice win and Henry Williams had a hard-fought draw, but unfortunately we lost on the bottom two boards (sorry, team mates!).



There is always next year!

Bob wins A-league title

Bob Fenn has won the chess club A-league title, with a perfect 10/10.

Bob scored an excellent win with the white pieces over his closest challenger Matt Bunn.

Matt played a Pirc Defence and seemed to get a slight advantage, but misplayed slightly and allowed Bob back into the game. Matt could probably retain an advantage by playing 23... Bg4, instead of Kxf8. After this, Bob then played very strongly and combined his Queen and Rook to give a neat checkmate.

Well played Bob, a perfect 100% score in the league!

Game below:

Challenge Cup Results

The Challenge Cup 1st round brought some interesting results. Soriah Williams defended very well against Matt Bunn's attack and then managed to win a rook and the game!

Craig Miners managed to checkmate Neil Miners in only 16 moves, with an unusual double bishop attack.

Matthew Gazes defended very well and managed to hold a draw against his much more experienced opponent Len Hammond, despite being a pawn down. This game will be re-played, with Matt having the white pieces this time.

Bob Fenn and Henry Williams had hard-fought games against Mesut Yilmaz and Nick Allen, respectively. Eventually, the two higher rated players won through.

Arjun Toor scored a nice win against John Morgan and sets up an exciting quarter-final match against either Matt or Len.

David Lettington managed to win against Ben Stokes in a Giuoco Piano opening after winning a knight early on in the game.

Visit from IM Bob Wade

International Master Bob Wade came to the chess club on Saturday to do a brief lecture. Bob demonstrated two games; Steinitz versus von Bardeleben, played at Hastings in 1895 and then he showed a recent win that he scored in the London League.

Bob then simultaneously played all of the members present. Well done to Henry Williams and Soriah Williams who managed to draw. Especially well done to Bob Fenn and Matt Bunn, who managed to win! Bob Wade won all of the other games. Matt Bunn's win is shown below:

Many thanks to Bob for an enjoyable day!

A-league results

There were 3 A-league games this week:
Bob Fenn 1-0 Soriah Williams
Neil Miners 0-1 David Lettington
plus Len Hammond won by default

Both Challenge Cup preliminary games were completed:
Luke Chapman 0-1 David Lettington
Malcolm Stokes 0-1 Craig Miners

Challenge Cup draw

Cllr Paul Hickmott did the draw for our cup competition, the Challenge Cup. There are 18 competitors this year, meaning 4 unlucky people have to play in a Preliminary round. The draw is below:

Speed Chess Championship results

The Speed Chess Championship was won by David Lettington this year, who managed (with quite a large chunk of luck) to win every game.

There were 14 competitors, split into two groups. In Group A, David and Bob Fenn both got off to flying starts, with Craig Miners in hot pursuit. If Craig had managed to beat Bob in their individual game, he would have finished as runner-up in the group.

In Group B, Matt Bunn managed to win every game, despite nearly missing the whole event because of a delayed train. The runner-up spot was a very close run thing, with Nick Allen, Matthew Gazes, Len Hammond and new member Mesut Yilmaz all in the running. In the end, Matt Gazes won his game against Nick Allen to take runner-up spot on tie-break.

In the Semi-Finals, Matt Bunn beat Bob Fenn, whilst Matt Gazes played brilliantly and got a won position aganist David Lettington, but unfortunately Matt ran out of time.

The Final was a repeat of last year and was a very exciting game, with an offbeat opening from Matt Bunn that caused lots of complications. However, once David had centralised his Rooks he managed to co-ordinate them with his light-squared Bishop into an unstoppable attack.

IM Bob Wade to visit club

Snodland Chess Club are privileged to have International Master, and former British Champion, Bob Wade visiting the club for a coaching session and game demonstration.

The event will take place at 10.30am on Saturday 14th April, at the Cricket Pavilion in Rocfort Road, Snodland.

If you are interested in attending, please e-mail or phone David Lettington.

Snodland Partnership donates to chess club.

Snodland Partnership have very kindly made a donation to the chess club to enable us to have more teams in Kent County Chess Assocation competitions. We will also be using the money to provide chess coaching. We will particularly be concentrating on junior players.

Soriah wins B-league.

Soriah Williams has the won the club's B-league competition for 2006-07. Well played Soriah!

Soriah is currently on a perfect score in the B-league and cannot be caught by any of her competitors, with everyone having one or two games to play. This is a brilliant performance and means that Soriah is likely to be in the A-league next year. Soriah is the youngest competitor in club competitions and she beaten all of the older (and more experienced) players in the B-league that she has played.

Junior Coaching Session

The next junior coaching session will be on Thursday 5th April from 6.30pm to 7.30pm.

Anyone can come along, it is free of charge and you don't have to be a club member.

All abilities, including complete beginners, are welcome!

A-league Results

There were 3 A-league games played this week:
Len Hammond 0-1 Bob Fenn
Nick Allen 1-0 John Morgan
Neil Miners 1-0 Ben Stokes

Well done Bob, for maintaining your 100% record!

Bob leads the league with 8 out of 8. Matt Bunn is not too far behind, with 6½ out of 7. Matt and Bob are yet to play each other, so the title is all to play for.

Speed Chess Championship

The club Speed Chess Championship (5 minutes per player for the whole game) will take place on Thursday 5th April, starting at 7.45pm. Matt Bunn won the competition last year with a perfect 12 out of 12. It's very annoying that he seems to be even better at speed chess this year!

The draw for the Challenge Cup (our knockout cup competition) will take place on the same evening.

A-league Results

There were two games played in the A-league competition this week:

Matt Bunn (111) 0.5-0.5 Henry Williams (130)
David Lettington (112) 1-0 Soriah Williams (46)

Coaching Event on Tuesday 20th March

On Tuesday 20th March, there will be two coaching events at the Cricket Pavilion.

From 6.30pm to 7.30pm, there will be junior coaching.

From 8.00pm to 9.30pm, for more experienced players there will be a session called "How Chess Players Think". This will be followed by a showing of "American Gambit" (if we can get the technology to work!).

Snodland reaches National Club Championship Semi-Final

Congratulations to the team in the National Club Championship U100 section, who defeated Rainham Chess Club by the narrow margin of 2.5 - 1.5 in the Quarter-Final match.

The match was played over four boards (player ECF grades in brackets), Snodland had the white pieces on odd numbered boards:

Snodland vs Rainham
1. Matt Bunn (111) 0 - 1 Robert Springett (118)
2. David Lettington (112) 1 - 0 Barry Roles (91)
3. Nick Allen (93) 0.5 - 0.5 Bert Clemons (58)
4. Soriah Williams (50) 1-0 D. Sibborn (57)

Matt Bunn's game was an exciting affair that could have gone either way, but Matt made a slip towards the end that allowed his opponent back in the game.

David Lettington scored a quick win after his opponent missed a tactical blow on move 6 which allowed his King to be opened up to a strong attack. Game below:

Nick Allen took a draw when Snodland were already two-nil up, thus giving us a win. Nick had the advantage throughout the game and probably had a win in the final position.

Soriah Williams played brilliantly and never let her opponent into the game. This was Soriah's first win in competitive play for the club and she used the open diagonals and files to create pressure which her opponent could not withstand.

Snodland are to play Magdalen College School in the Semi-Final, the date is yet to be set.