Snodland 7th vs Snodland 6th: 0.5-3.5

Snodland 6th team again beat the Snodland 7th team, but this time by a bigger margin. The games all went as expected according to grade, except for the board 2 clash between Daryn Gilbert and Hugh Broadbent.

Daryn played extremely well to score a draw against hig higher graded opponent and in the process brought Hugh's nine game winning streak to an end.

Daryn was a pawn up for much of the game and even had winning chances, but Hugh defended well and managed to hold the draw.

Snodland 6th vs Snodland 7th: 3-1

In the first competitive match of the season, Snodland 6th team managed to beat Snodland 7th team by the convincing score of 3-1. At one point it looked like the score might have been 4-0, but some strong endgame play from Daryn Gilbert enabled him to beat his much higher grade opponent.

Hugh Broadbent scored his 9th consecutive win at the club by outplaying John Simons.

The game between Charlie Palmer and William Patch was extremely hard fought, with William fighting hard in a rook ending a pawn down, but Charlie showed good technique to convert his advantage to a full point.

The diagram below is the final position in Jason Boyes vs Richard Mallery. Richard played well but let his initial opening advantage slip and Jason had a tremendous attack and bulit up a significant material advantage. Unfortunately Jason missed Richard's strong attack down the h-file and was checkmated.

Nigel Short vs Mike Wiltshire - play through the game

Below is the game the Kent County Chess Association Chairman played against Nigel Short..... Mike played very well and I think that he will get his revenge next time!

Club Championship results - week 1

There were lots of games played to kick off the Club Championship this week:

Group A
Steve Giddins (198) 1 vs 0 Jason Boyes (14)
Bob Fenn (133) 1 vs 0 John Simons (89)
Matt Gazes (125) 0.5 vs 0.5 Nick Allen (118)

Group B
David Lettington (132) 1 vs 0 Tyrone Jefferies (117)

Group C
Zibby Koncki (170) 1 vs 0 William Patch (52)
David Fowler (136) 0 vs 1 Hugh Broadbent (99)

Group D
Ben Spink (191) 1 vs 0 Richard Mallery (34)
George Hollands (133) 1 vs 0 Neil Miners (85)
Douglas Smith (126) 0.5 vs 0.5 John Brown (110)

Congratulations to Hugh Broadbent who not only beat a much higher graded player but has now won eight games in a row at the club.

The position shown above occurred in one of the games in this week's club championship.

Here, black played the innocent looking 1....Nc4, but white then plays 2. Be6! Ne3 3. Rxf7! Rxf7 4. Rxf7 Rb1+ 5. Rf1+ black resigns.

Dinner with Garry Kasparov

Two members of Snodland Chess Club, David Lettington and Steve Giddins, were lucky enough to have dinner with Garry Kasparov yesterday ....... along with 200 other people at the Staunton Memorial Dinner at the historic Simpsons-in-the Strand.

The event was held to raise money for charity and also for Anatoly Karpov's bid to become President of FIDE, the world chess federation. There were many chess luminaries there and the Chairman of the Kent County Chess Association, Mike Wiltshire, was lucky enough to get to play against former World Championship challenger, Nigel Short (pictured above).

In addition to Karpov, Kasparov and Short, other top players in attendance were Michael Adams, Luke McShane, David Norwood, Raymond Keene, Nicholas Pert and Jonathan Speelman. The evening was organised by CJ de Mooi, of Eggheads fame, who is the President of the English Chess Federation.