Chess Go Spinny

 Going into Round 7 , Keith Arkell and Harry Grieve were tied for the lead. Their draw against each other meant that a number of people could go on to draw level with them, and three took the opportunity: Nick Pert (who beat Kirk), Matthew Wadsworth (who beat Emms) and David Eggleston (who beat Clarke, effectively ending the latter's GM norm hopes). Those five people are tied on 5½, with Gormally and Richard Pert just behind them on 5. My hopes of achieving a high placing in this tournament gurgled away this round, as I got into what proved to be a very bad position early on against Jonah Willow, and lost convincingly.

The top board pairing in Round 6 was a hard-fought but solid draw, meaning Keith Arkell maintained his position at the top; he was caught by Harry Grieve, who won quickly against Danny Gormally. Those two are now the leaders on 5; there is a chasing pack of seven people on 4½, one of them Nick Pert, who took an early advantage against me and didn't give me anything in the way of swindling chances. For the first time in the tournament, there is an outright leader in the women's championship - Katarzyna Toma and Lan Yao had matched each other's results exactly in rounds 1-5, but Yao pulled ahead in round 6 by beating Charlie Storey, while Toma could only get a draw against Steve Dishman.

 The top-board clash in Round 5 was a rather tame and uninspiring draw in ten moves. This meant that a decisive game on board 2 would likely produce a sole leader, and Keith Arkell duly delivered. In true Arkell style, he won the game in the ending. He now leads the tournament with 4½ points, ahead of six players (R Pert, Clarke, Grieve, Emms, Wadsworth and Gormally) on 4. Harry Grieve's TPR so far of 2599 means he is just about on course for a GM norm, never mind the IM norm that would also be very valuable. I am half a point behind the chasing pack, on 3½, after a nice win against Stephen Dishman, who went into an opening line that, while maybe not really all that good for white, I have a very good record in. My reward for this win is to face top seed Nick Pert.

 Danny Gormally's position in the lead of was short-lived, as he lost in Round 4 to Brandon Clarke. Clarke is now one of five joint leaders, along with Kirk (who beat Derakhshani), Arkell (who beat Price), Richard Pert (who beat Domenech) and Grieve (who was the only lower-seeded player to win at the top, with a win against Nigel Davies). Grieve's results so far are enough to have taken him clearly over the 2400 barrier, although as yet he does not have enough norms for the IM title. My own game was a bit of a horror show; my opponent's attacking instincts were more switched on than mine, and he built up a lovely attack that forced me to give up my queen for a rook and a piece. He then really should have gone on to convert that to victory, but nerves and time worked against him, and he ended up blundering his queen. Well, I'll take the lucky victories along with the good ones.

 Danny Gormally took the sole lead in round 3 of the British, as he beat Robert Eames while the other two games in the top scoregroup were drawn. His reward is a game against Brandon Clarke, who convincingly beat me after I failed to cope with his opening preparation. There are eleven players in the chasing pack on 2½, with local interest there represented by Keith Arkell of Paignton and William Claridge-Hansen of Exeter. Also up there is Gwilym Price, who followed up his previous excellent results with a win against James Jackson; he is so far gaining 40 points from just three games.

Round 2 of the British was one where I had a classic frustrating experience; although I would, at the start of the game, have been happy with a draw with black against a player rated 130 points above me, it was nevertheless a game where I'd had a winning position and let it slip through my fingers. Elsewhere in the round, the story at the top of the tournament was the familiar one of seeds mostly getting through - although there was one major exception; first-round giant-killer Bob Eames repeated his feat, this time against Chris Ward. However, the story at the bottom of the tournament was very different, as six players who started the round on 0 lost to lower-rated opposition. This included Peter Wells, whose loss with white to 1982-rated Thomas Donaldson was the major shock of the tournament so far.

 It's that time of year once again, and I am at Torquay for the British Championship . It's normally a bit earlier in the summer - last week of July or first week of August - but has been moved back a couple of weeks so as not to clash with the Olympiad. (As it happens, only two of the relevant countries' Olympiad players - Lan Yao and Katarzyna Toma - are playing, but the capacity was there for the others to do so if they wished.) In the absence of the England team members, the top seed and favourite is Nick Pert, the only player in the tournament rated over 2500. But he may not have it easy, with twelve other 2400+ rated players in the event. Round 1 was the classic top half v bottom half first round, but with the narrow rating band the British lies in, the seeds didn't have it all their own way - two bottom-half players, Gwilym Price and Robert Eames, managed to win against Peter Wells and Jonah Willow respectively, with another nine managing draws. My own game was ...

  Paul Morphy  One of the interesting features of chess is how the development of chess in a region can be sparked by the emergence of a world-class player who captures the public imagination; the number of strong Indian players who have made it to 2600 since Viswanathan Anand reached the elite in the 1990s is a good example, as is the rising profile of Norway since Magnus Carlsen did the same thing in the 2000s. And the subject of this piece, Paul Morphy (1837-1884), is one of the earliest examples of the phenomenon. The USA had some strong players in the mid-19th century, but nobody really on the level of Europe's best; since then, though, they have had world-class players in most eras, including one world champion (Fischer) and three other players who challenged directly for the world title (Marshall, Reshevsky and Caruana). So what was Morphy like as a player, and how did he come to have such a hold over the popular imagination? Well, one answer is that he was unquestiona...