British Championship 2022, Round 1

 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 against Matthew Forster, a player I had never played before (although I have done a lot of arbiting work alongside him and his father). The game was a Queen's Gambit Accepted, which coincidentally is an opening we're currently discussing in the Chess With Friends Facebook group I'm a member of. I managed to get an advantage by the early middlegame thanks to some excellent light-square control, and converted it for a first-round victory.





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