Cumbria Chess

15th South Lakes Open Chess Congress

South Lakes Prizewinners (as pdf)
SLC Best Game (as pdf)

Chess County League

Cumbria v Lancashire
6th March 2011

Results table (as pdf)

This year, the county match was played on the Sunday 6th March in Lancaster at the Reform Club, which is also the venue of Lancaster Chess Club. Cumbria decided to enter a team for the U160. After long discussions on the competition format, the date and the location, it was decided that the U160 section would be played as a jamboree match between the three teams that entered: Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cumbria. Due to mismanagement, the Yorkshire team could not be raised on time and the competition turned out to be a simple match between Lancashire and Cumbria.
Our team was lower graded on every boards although only by 5 points in most cases. At the end, Cumbria lost the match on the honourable score of 4.5-7.5, with 1 win and 7 draws. The final result could have been even higher, as some games could have easily been won by Cumbria.
For instance, Lewis McAtear came out of the opening with a pawn up and a good control of the centre. Trading down an exchange later, he eventually played the endgame with two extra pawns for a bishop. At that stage the pawns were stronger and his opponent had to resort to perpetual checks in fear of losing the game.
Last game to finish, George Horne was playing Lancashire’s captain, William O’Rourke. George showed his usual resilience in a double-edge queen, rook and bishop endgame where both kings were vulnerable. He recovered from being a pawn down and under pressure on the kingside in the middle game, to an attacking position with an extra pawn in the endgame! As both players were very short on time and there was no clear advantage, a draw was eventually agreed.
Also to be mentioned a very stiff resistance by Dave McMath who, being a pawn down, hold his position against a strong double-rook attack and driving his opponent to propose a draw in time trouble. On board 1, David Siddall had a superior position and could have won his game, but he miscalculated an exchange and resigned after losing his rook.
The best performance was achieved by the team captain, Philippe Gleizon. After he attacked too early in a Slav defence’s Alekhine variation, he was struggling in the middle game with an inferior development and an exposed king. However, Philippe capitalised on a couple of dubious moves from his opponent to get two extra pawns. After a nice combination of checks with his pair of bishops his finally won a bishop by a skewer, forcing his opponent’s resignation.
Although our team lost, it was an enjoyable day in a good atmosphere. Many thanks to all the players involved and to everyone for your dedication to chess in Cumbria.

Philippe Gleizon

Cumbria Open Individual Championships 2011

Results

NCCU Intermediate final

This match was played on Friday 15th October at Lancaster chess club. Many thanks are due to Colin Fisher of Lancaster CC for agreeing to host and facilitate the match.

Luck was certainly with Heywood tonight – the Austin Friars 0.5-3.5 Heywood scoreline is a travesty – the result was wide open with just 15 minutes left to play. Many thanks to the Austin Friars team for playing the game in the right spirit.

Bill O’Rourke (Heywood Intermediate captain)

Carlisle Rapidplay 2010

held at Carlisle Working Mens’ Club 19 September 2010.
This year’s tournament had a smaller entry than the last few years but there was certainly no drop in quality or in the intensity of the competition.

Open section
Colin Costello, at home in Carlisle for a few days from Germany, beat the defending champion Robert Patla in the opening round to throw the competition wide open. Malcolm Armstrong, also home for a couple of days to watch Carlisle United and play chess, was playing really well as was Jaroslav Vrubl, last year’s runner-up and they played a really tight game in round 4 that came down to who could play the pawn endgame better. Jaroslav seized on one small slip by Malcolm to make himself the clear leader going into the last round.
After his initial loss Robert was determined he wasn’t out of it and played very well to get back to top board and he outplayed Jaroslav in the final game to cause a three-way tie at the top, the first time this has ever happened. Using the sum of cumulative scores as our tiebreak left Jaroslav this year’s winner (using the Bucholz tiebreak gave the same result).
The grading prize went to David Wrigley from Hexham who was graded second from bottom but scored 3 out of 5 to finish fourth.

Under 150 section
This section contained a national champion, Zhang Zheming won the UK under 8 and under 9 titles this year but with decent junior tournaments scarce is entering adult tournaments . In this one he found the going hard at first but was very competitive and finished with a couple of wins. Cockermouth players dominated the section as Ian Stone, Neil Jones and Bill Henderson all jockeying for the top spots but Tim Wrigley beat Ian in the final round to make it another three-way tie with Bill getting the frading prize.

Under 120 section
This section contained 4 adults and 6 juniors most of whom were playing in their first adult tournament and so did not expect to do particularly well. Peter Blackmore was inspired in this section and was delighted to win his first ever tournament in 49 years of chess though Dave Parlour pushed him all the way. Next though was twelve year old Camas Millar who played competitively throughout, never gave up and even had the cheek to beat his dad in round 4. Another twelve-year old, Jason Maxwell, finished fourth and with James Leitch finishing fifth our juniors seem to be making the transition to adult chess fairly successfully.

Overall it was an enjoyable though tiring day. Thanks to everyone for cooperating so well, for helping set up before and put away afterwards and above all for their sporting behaviour all day. Any comments on venue, running of competitions etc will be gratefully received sop that hopefully we can make next year better.

Syd Cassidy

Results

Borders Cup

Played at the Working Mens Club, Carlisle on Tuesday 22nd June.