Chess Go Spinny

I first referenced this video in the piece about Alexander Petrov , but it bears another look: You will notice that  Paul Morphy was dominant throughout his entire competitive career, but his reign as world #1 was interrupted briefly by a player called Kolisch, who then almost immediately disappears from the scene. So this piqued my interest: who was this mysterious Kolisch, and why is his name so much less familiar than those of his contemporaries? Well, the answer, on looking at his  Wikipedia article , seems to be that he just had a very short playing career, and did not play much against the big names of his day. This is backed up by his chessgames page , which shows nearly all his games coming in the years 1857-1867. This did, however, include two triumphs in international tournaments. One was the relatively weak Cambridge 1860 event, but the other was the rather stronger  Paris 1867 event, which would also star future world champion Steinitz. This tournament ef...

 The 4NCL , Britain's only professional chess league, has, like many chess events, been disrupted by the ongoing pandemic. The 2019-20 season was aborted six rounds in; there was no 2020-21 season, and the 2021-22 season was an experimental format for that season only: a Swiss system (chosen so that if it needed to terminate early, the final finishing positions would still be reasonable ones). The twelve teams who finished at the top of the Swiss that year would be in Division 1 in the new 2022-23 season, and my team, West Is Best, were one of the lucky twelve. This was naturally always going to be a tricky season to negotiate, and the way the draw was done meant we could expect a rocky start: the top six finishers of the previous season were paired to face the teams finishing 7th-12th in the first six rounds of the season, thus maximizing the chances of exciting promotion and relegation clashes occurring towards the end. Thus, arriving at the Daventry Court Hotel on the Saturday,...

 How would tournament leader Harry Grieve approach Round 9 ? He knew beforehand that a draw would be sufficient to get him a GM norm and a playoff place (or outright victory if N Pert - Arkell was a draw), and many people speculated that he would play a very solid opening to maximize his drawing chances. Not a bit of it; he played a very adventurous opening in which he sacrificed the exchange early on, and ended up sacrificing another one later. For a long while, it wasn't clear what the result would be, and when Pert got an early advantage against Arkell and smoothly converted it, the organizing team were gearing themselves up for a playoff. It turned out not to be necessary; the complications eventually resolved in Grieve's favour, and he ended up delivering mate in a position where his opponent's two queens were useless to prevent it. He thus won the tournament outright, as well as obtaining his final IM norm (and the title) and first GM norm. Nick Pert finished second, ...

My apologies for the severe delay to this round report - I came down with Covid immediately after the British, and a combination of recovery from that and difficult home circumstances meant I found it difficult to write. It's not often that a GM loses in twelve moves, but this happened in Round 8 of the British Championship, as Danny Gormally's championship hopes ended very quickly against John Emms. The other games on the top boards lasted considerably longer, with Wadsworth - N Pert and R Pert - Arkell being hard-fought draws; this allowed Harry Grieve to take sole lead going into the last round with a win against Eggleston. This win also wrapped up the Under-21 title for Grieve, as Jonah Willow could only draw against Brandon Clarke. With Balaji also having wrapped up the Under-18 title, this meant that the only subsidiary title still in the balance was the women's championship; draws for Lan Yao and Katarzyna Toma and a win for Sheila Jackson meant that all three compe...

 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...

Keith Arkell's game in Round 9 finished pretty quickly, as he got into a bad position out of the opening against Richardson and accepted an early draw. Mine was also quite swift, as I won a pawn against Brown and converted the advantage in the ending. Keith and I spent the remainder of the session enjoying the sun outside and watching the other results come in. And the way those other results came in mostly worked in my favour: Peter Wells's win against Camacho Collados wrapped up the tournament for him, and when Alistair Hill managed to hold against Maksimenko, I realized that I'd come equal third . Not a bad showing for my first tournament back, although the loss of 13 rating points is not something I am keen to repeat. 1st: Wells 8 2nd: Arkell 7 3rd=: Camacho Collados, Richardson, Rudd, Murphy, Maksimenko 6 Richardson and Murphy, as the highest placed not-already-qualified eligible players, qualify for the 2023 British Championship (venue unknown as of t...

Round 8 saw Peter Wells take the sole lead, as he beat Thomas Brown, while Keith Arkell could only draw with Maksimenko. In the other game in the top scoregroups, Camacho Collados defended well against a spirited attack from Smith and emerged the winner in the last game to finish. The second-last game to finish was my game against Hugh Murphy, which will surprise anyone familiar with the speed with which I play. Mind you, when the game goes on past move 80, that tends to happen. Having gone a pawn down in the middlegame, I ended up having to struggle for a long time in a queen ending, and was lucky to escape with a draw.

Keith Arkell needed his swindling technique once again in Round 7 , as he somehow managed to win a two-pawns-down rook ending against Nilsson. This win kept him neck and neck with Peter Wells, who beat Olivia Smith: the two of them now led the field by a clear point. In the chasing pack on 5, Smith was joined by Camacho Collados (who beat Hill), Maksimenko (who beat Waddington) and Brown (who beat Menadue). My own game was not one for the anthologies; after getting a nice position out of the opening against Sam Jukes, I made a horrible blunder that dropped the exchange, but somehow managed to claw it back and win anyway.

In both the previous rounds, there was a dramatic game near the top, but Round 6 featured a dramatic non- game near the top instead. Borna Derakhshani withdrew on the day of the round, giving his opponent, Olivia Smith, a free point. She was joined in the lead on 5/6 by Peter Wells, who beat Richardson, and Keith Arkell, who won a topsy-turvy game against Camacho Collados. My chances of doing anything of note in the tournament were pretty much ended here, as I got horribly tangled up in a Benoni against Alistair Hill. Sometimes these technically bad but interesting to play positions end up resolving in black's favour, but this was just never the case here.

You win some, you lose some. Having beaten the top seed in the morning, John Richardson was brought down to earth in Round 5 by losing to Olivia Smith. This result brought Smith into the joint lead, as the other games involving the players in the 3½ score-group all ended in draws. I managed to keep myself just half a point behind the leaders by winning a long endgame grind against Roger de Coverly; in a King's Indian position with mutual bad bishops, my bad bishop proved to be more useful than his in the endgame.

With tournament leader Derakhshani taking a bye in Round 4 , this created an excellent opportunity for members of the chasing pack to join him in the lead. And, unfortunately for me, Peter Wells was one of the ones who did so, absolutely crushing me with the Trompowsky. He was, unsurprisingly, joined by Camacho Collados, who beat Brown, and Arkell, who beat Blackburn, but the other decisive result was a surprise: John Richardson beat top seed Maksimenko in a theoretical line that has appeared a few times this year in the FIDE Grand Prix.

Round 3 was the round where the real heavyweight clashes of the tournament began, and it showed in the results; of the nine players who started the day on 2/2, only one, FM Borna Derakhshani, made it to 3/3, with a win against Alistair Hill. Together with a clean sweep of decisive results in the 1½ scoregroup, this meant that there was a chasing pack of nine players on 2½.  My game against Keith Arkell was one of those topsy-turvy games that often characterizes our encounters; after getting a big advantage from the opening, Keith overlooked a freeing move that allowed me to get a good position; I then misplayed a winning middlegame and allowed him to escape into a drawn - although not trivially so - ending.  

Round 2 was also reasonably comfortable for the seeded players, with only Jukes's draw against Nilsson preventing them from getting a clean sweep in the 1/1 scoregroup. Midway through the round, though, this didn't look exactly assured: both Bullen-Camacho Collados and Arkell-Menadue could plausibly have gone the other way. My pairing was against an 18-year-old Welshman called Ifan Rathbone-Jones, who played everyone's favourite traditional drawing weapon, the London System. I went for an aggressive counter involving ...Qb6 and ...Bf5, and ended up with a nice position that I managed to convert quickly.