Barnet Elizabethans Chess Club

There are some systems where one side knows what he's going to play, more or less regardless of what's happening on the other side of the board. Usually it's White who has this luxury, and usually he's playing for some sort of automatic kingside attack. You know the sort of thing - a King's Indian Attack, or Grand Prix Attack, or one of the Colle / London / Stonewall type setups. It can be rather annoying to play against this stuff. Not that it's objectively so frightening; but practically speaking White is likely to get his attack, and probably also an advantage on the clock in a type of position that he plays every week - and that's not to be sniffed at. Nevertheless, my approach in defending against all this is generally to allow, or even encourage, White to do what he wants to do. I tell myself that so long as I haven't made any serious mistakes then there's no reason that his attack should deserve to succeed; and that if and when it fails ...

Here's a rare thing, and a nice way to start the new year: a game that I'm pretty much happy with. It's not perfect of course - I'm not strong enough for that! - but it went about as well as I could hope: a favourable opening leading to a dangerous-looking initiative, and some attractive tactics to finish. Here's the position after Opponent's 19. ... Rf8-h8: I want to play 20. Nxf7: while it all looks promising I can't see far enough to be sure that I haven't missed some defence. Can I (should I) screw up the courage to play it anyway? Maybe I was just feeling reckless, but actually this wasn't a particularly hard decision. I spent a little more time than I would on a 'normal' move and decided that, so far as I could see, 20. Nxf7 was strongest. So, play it! There's not much point in figuring out what the best move is if you're too scared to go through with it. Yes, you might be wrong, and if so then you might lose - but I'd...

Finally wrapping up 2008, I present the last few moves of this adjournment . After an error-filled first session, we had left the game here: I'm afraid that the standard didn't improve much when we came back. 39. ... Qf1+? misses the opportunity to bail out with 39. ... Rca7 40. Nc5+ Kc7 41. a4 Rxa4, which appears to be dead drawn. Really if I'd done my homework properly on the adjournment I ought to have known this. After this Opponent is winning but blundered with 44. Qd3? - only to be allowed back into things by 48. ... R2a4? As blunders go, though, 48. ... R2a4 was rather a fortunate one - I had completely missed the point of 48. g4, which was to threaten 49. Qg6+ Qe6 50. Rxd5+! Kxd5 51. Qd3+ Kc6 (51. ... Ke5 52. Qd4# - aha, so 48. g4 was to cover f5) 52. Nd4+. By the end of the game I think we were both rather relieved to take the draw; given more opportunities I'm sure that either of us could have found plenty more ways to lose this one. In post-mortem, Oppon...

Letsplaychess.com Instructive game: Don't play a passive opening! Barnet beat Royston in Herts Division 1 league!

The other day I found myself messing around with grading calculations for my games from the last few years. You can massage the figures to draw pretty much whatever conclusion you like - especially if, like me, you don't play all that many games. When the law of large numbers hasn't had a chance to assert itself, it's just a question of picking out whatever randomness appeals to you. For instance, since taking up chess again (after about ten years out) my grades have gone: 139, 153, 160. (And, albeit after very few games, my performance this season is a touch over 170). What a marvellous story of continuous improvement - at this rate I should be giving young Carlsen one hell of a beating by 2020 or so. Well maybe, but I notice that if rather than considering the grading season you instead start the year at January 1st then you get a completely different story. Then my annual performances have gone: 125, 170, 155, 165. Perhaps Magnus shouldn't be too worried after...

... but, with any luck, neither does your opponent. And that can be a lot of fun! So it proved in this game, where I stumbled my way into some typically wild Najdorf theory and blundered around like the amateur that I am. At the end of the evening the strong players in the room gathered round and convinced us that black probably should have lost several times over. In this position, they all wanted to play 11. Nd5 and things do indeed get rather hairy here. But on checking the database afterwards, it seems that a few brave grandmasters are still occasionally willing to enter into this line; so it should surely be playable at my level. After that there were rather a lot of errors. 15. ... Kf8 is a clear mistake, and white misses a nice shot at move 19: Here 19. Bg6! seems to win on the spot: after 19. ... fxg6 20. Qxg6 black can't cover both e6 and g7 and goes down quickly; while either 19 ... Raf8 or 19. ... Rhf8 loses to 20. Qh4+. After that the computers consider roughly ever...

Continuing through my backlog of un-blogged games, we reach November and Hemel Hempstead. I'm afraid that it was probably this game that triggered five weeks of silence - I've noticed that I'm often rather slower to post my losses than my wins; and this one really didn't go well. The critical moment comes at move 15: Can I retrieve that far-flung knight? I decided that 15. Bf4? was the only way to do it, but after 15. ... cxb2 black's pawn becomes deeply unpleasant. I was nowhere near seeing the computer's 15. Kg2! Bc5 16. b4!, after which the game remains in the balance. I finished the game off with a blunder, but things were almost certainly too far gone by then anyway. All in all, not one of my better efforts. Happily for Barnet, the rest of the team did rather better, and we scored a fourth win. As a Hull City fan I know better than to get overexcited by a promising start - but you can't really argue with four out of four.