2021 British Championship, Round 2

Round 2 saw the first heavyweight clashes of the tournament, and Danny Gormally put forward a strong statement of intent by beating Eggleston with black to move on to 2/2. He is joined on the top score by Mark Hebden, who was made to work very hard by 10-year-old Scottish junior Freddie Gordon.

There are six people in the score-group behind them, and it was no great surprise to see McPhillips and Ledger reach 1½ by drawing with each other, nor Arkell and Harvey join them by beating significantly lower-rated opponents. Perhaps more surprising were the performances of Neil Bradbury, who successfully defended a pawn-down ending against top seed Nick Pert, and Peter Finn, who achieved the first giant-killing of the tournament by beating Phil Brooks, rated 232 points above him.

A sensation seemed to have happened very early on in this round, as the bottom-board game between Mehrafarin and Starley appeared to have gone 1.d4 Nf6 2.Bf4 d6 3.e3 1-0. I had jokingly suggested on social media that Starley had resigned rather than face the prospect of having to play against the London System; the more mundane explanation turned out to be that a rogue result had crept onto the live board software.


Board No. Name Rtg Pts. Result Pts. Name Rtg No.
1 7 IM Eggleston David   J 2356 1 0 - 1 1 GM Gormally Daniel   W 2480 2
2 21 Gordon Frederick 1523 1 0 - 1 1 GM Hebden Mark L 2455 4
3 5 IM Mcphillips   Joseph 2425 1 ½ - ½ 1 IM Ledger Andrew J 2329 8
4 1 GM Pert Nicholas 2548 ½ ½ - ½ 1 IM Bradbury Neil H 2265 10
5 3 FM Harvey Marcus R 2465 ½ 1 - 0 ½ Khoury Theo 1814 19
6 22 AFM Latypova Olga L 1266 ½ 0 - 1 ½ GM Arkell Keith C 2380 6
7 9 FM Olson Hamish 2273 ½ ½ - ½ ½ WFM Sucikova   Svetlana 2175 13
8 16 Finn Peter 1959 ½ 1 - 0 ½ Brooks Phil J 2191 11
9 12 FM Webb Laurence E 2184 0 1 - 0 0 Willison Steven 1936 17
10 14 WFM Head Louise 2090 0 1 - 0 0 Stubbs Oliver 1925 18
11 20 Mehrafarin   Amirabbas 1734 0 0 - 1 0 Starley Robert 2057 15


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