Barnet Elizabethans Chess Club

An amusing quickplay game that I played last night against Wood Green. After the game, Opponent and I believed that 17 ... bxc3? was just losing. The computer, though, is reluctant to confirm this - not, as I'd initially thought, because it is too stupid to understand the white attack but rather because it sees some black resources that had completely escaped us. The win is, at the very least, harder than we'd realised. Over-keen readers might want to try and figure out what is really going on.

All Barnet chess club members are invited, and viewers of the website!

Over at the Streatham & Brixton blog, Tom has been running a series of How To Improve type posts. I'm a bit slow off the mark, but a couple of them caught my eye, for differing reasons. The first was his recommendation to practise with a real board , setting up conditions to be as similar to tournament play as you can manage. I expect it's good advice; if nothing else it sounds like awfully hard work and I've a nasty feeling that this is the main thing that's required if you're serious about improving. What it reminded me of, though, was a match a year or two ago over at Wanstead (I think). I was playing a board or two below fellow-blogger kingscrusher, who had presumably been spending rather too much time playing online. Half an hour or so in he takes me to one side and says something like: "Dave, this over the board stuff, I'm finding it a bit unfamiliar. The thing is, it's very... it's very realistic isn't it?". Well, it mad