Scottish Championships 2016 - Day 5 - A slip of the tongue!

I knew today was going to be different.  It all started when I woke up and was totally convinced it was Tuesday.  I always seem to suffer a strange time dilation during the Scottish.  Dropping the kids off at my parents, my mum warned me to my horror that I had split my shorts.  No time to head home and change and the only shop I can think of to buy a pair is Marks and Spencer (that legendary pairing Alex and I have been trying to get in the Scottish for years). Now I am not the smallest of people so finding shorts my size is usually a frustrating task.  Doesn't help when the shorts they had were either a size too small or a size too large.  Thankfully I found a pair that were the right size and the players were spared the sight of me walking around with masking tape covering an area they would not want to see (and as it turned out, the masking tape disappeared so would have been even more embarrassing!)

I like my designer clothes.  My brand of choice is George from Asda :p

I had an interesting conversation today with someone who will remain unnamed. They were trying to describe a form of chess and could not remember the name.  The comment "I am thinking of womens knickers" was made and we all melted.  Wasn't quite what they meant to say (We were talking about Basque Chess)!!!  They will not live that one down for a while.

I do like it when players give us feedback, both good and bad.  Take for example today.  One of the players mentioned they could not get the games to display on their Ipad as it does not have flash.  As quick as a flash (sorry) we put links up so they can be displayed on Ipads.

I have been trying to get photos of everyone who is taking part.  I thought I had succeeded until  David Watson mentioned to me today that he was missing but he was glad.  I really need to redress the balance so here is David playing today

So what happened on the chess front?  Well firstly the boards behaved themsgame of elves again and I am thinking of putting another one on tomorrow.  On board 1 not a lot happened.  Draw in 16 moves.  The first (and hopefully last) in the tournament so far.

The rest of the games were hard fought and we saw some really good chess.  My game of the day was  another draw, this time a 74 move cracker between IM Douglas Bryson and Richard Birkett.

We join the game at move 60.  Douglas has an "Interesting" pawn structure

I don't know what I expected here, I certainly did not expect the Bxg5 that was played!  The plan is simple, white liquidates the black pawns leaving g3 and h3.  The question is can white actually win from here.

The answer is yes if black does not play accurately.  I was following the game using tablebases so could see what was happening,  The only chance that Richard gave came on move 62.

Richard has just played Kd5.  This was the only mistake he made.  It left a mate in 26 left on the board.  I challenge anyone to find it (I will put the solution at the end of the blog).  This is why I love increments.  The quality of the endgames is a joy to behold.

Keti and Andy gave me a scare today.  There is a wee bug that can happen in the wired boards where the previous game gets played.  I scanned through the games quite early on and saw this

There is a distinct lack of pieces and not what I was seeing on the other boards.  Thinking the bug had struck, I searched the boards memory to restart the game in the correct place.  To my relief this was the correct position!

We also had our first 100+ move game of the tournament.  The temptation to tell Alex that the board had failed and he was going to have to type it in!

Here's hoping the chess tomorrow is just as good and we have as many fighting games as today

Mr Knight says "No more short draws!"

(Solution to mate in 26  63. h4 Nf7 64. h5 Kd6 65. Kf6 Ke7 66. h6 Kf8 67. h7 Ne5+ 68. Kf5 Kg7 69. Kxe5 Kh8 70. g4 Kxh7 71. Kf6 Kh6 72. g5+ Kh7 73.Kf7 Kh8 74. Kg6 Kg8 75. Kh6 Kf7 76. Kh7 Kf8 76. g5 Ke7 77. g7 Kd6 78 g8=Q and white can win at worst 9 moves later)

Scottish Championships 2016 - Day 4 - The Big Guns Face Off!

What an absolute treat we had today as the big guns started to play each other.  No GM draws here, each hard fought and to the bitter end.

For tactical players like myself the game between GM Matthew Turner and IM Stephen Mannion had a beautiful combination finish combining three tactical motifs. It's move 54 and black to move

Matthew plays the Knight sac 54.. Nxg4.  Play continues 55.hxg4 h3+ moving the king away from g2  56.Kg3 Qf1 57.Nh4 Bd4 58.Qd2 Qg2+ 59.Kxh3 Bxf2 beautifully obstructing the queen.  Going to use this position with the kids when the club starts back!

Whilst this was going on Keti was giving a masterclass in endgames.  We join the game on move 77 (yes 77!)  with black to move

h2 and the king is locked in.  All Keti needs to do it get the Knight to f2 and it is mate.  Not an easy task!

Try working it out.  What was played can be seen on todays live games but it was really good to watch.

So here are my 2 star players today.  Take a bow

On the whole, today went really well.  Lets be honest, after yesterday anything was an improvement.  I think the boards heard my threat to bring in an axe and behaved themselves.

There was a moment that I can only describe as OMG!  I happened to look up from the desk and to my utter horror I saw this

The cable had become detached from the table and was sitting across Neils legs!!  To be fair to Neil, he didn't complain but the second he got up from the table to stretch his legs, I was over with masking tape to fasten it back again so it did not annoy him!

Tomorrow sees what could be some cracking games.  I am certainly looking forward to them.

A feature of the Scottish in recent years has been the unbearable heat.  Thankfully it seems to be staying away making playing conditions pleasant.  Long may that continue!

Scottish Championships 2016 - Day 3 - Did I really say that?

To quote from yesterday "Overall not a bad day at all.  No real disasters and everything running smoothly.  It won't last :D"

Hmm, to quote from one Rudyard Kipling (no not the one who makes exceedingly good cakes!)  "If you can meet with triumph and disaster, and treat those two imposers just the same..."

I don't know where to start.  Headed to the venue with cables for the boards and a cable for the TV so we can show the games within the venue.  Wired it all up and...

No boards

90 minutes later and several cables thrown across the hall in complete temper and we have

No boards

"Ok, lets go back to the set up from yesterday and just use that" I think in desperation.  It would have worked had I not been ripping cables out with reckless abandon...

16 boards now down to 11.  But hey at least it is 11 boards!  I noticed one of the wireless boards battery packs charge level was lower than I felt comfortable with.  I had a full set completely charged but in my idiocy, grabbed the still hot ones out of the charger and changed them over completely forgetting the simple law of physics, hot metal objects expand.  The batteries cooled in the pack and yep you guessed it, just as play starts, popped out of the connector meaning we are now down to 10 boards.

And to make the morning really complete, board 1, the top board decided to disconnect at the start of play.  *sigh* Not my finest morning.  I got 9 boards going in the end!

In true Murphy style, the day finished as it started.  Alex, Ken and I did the draw, I put it into the computer to upload but thankfully checked for any anomalies.  There is was, I had marked the score on two of the pairing cards 0-0 and of course it affected most of the draw.  Redraw time...

I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue :p

Star of the day has to be Lukah Connolly-Sams.  Sitting with 2/3, half a point behind the leaders with a performance of 2149.  His grade is 1498 and today he drew with an IM!!  Lukah is 1/2 v 2100s!!  A simply outstanding performance.  His prize is a game against a 2200 and having seen him play the last couple of days, I fancy his chances!!

The 7 day event produced something really unusual.  When arbiting you think you have seen it all.  When I was alerted to this I really had to share.

We start with the position here, black has just sacrificed the bishop for a pawn (Bxg4)

After hxg4, Qxg4 and now it is 2 pawns for the bishop

A few moves later, pawn #3 comes off with Qxd3

e4 Qxf3, Nxf3 and pawn 4 comes off with Nxe4

Several moves later, the 5th pawn comes off to Bxf4

The 6th to Bxa3

And the final one to Bxb4

7 pawns for a bishop!!!  I'll take that anytime (I think my record is 5).  I think someone has been reading "Secrets of Pawnless Engames" by Nunn

And finally...

It has to be frustrating when you take 2 byes at the start only to find you are playing your clubmate in round 3.

Yep it happened today...

Scottish Championships 2016 - Day 2 - Ok, what's going on???

Day 2 has been completed. I am sitting at home and it is not even 7pm? This is the second day that we have finished early! This never happens, with the increment, we often are sitting there waiting for games to finish way past 7:30, neve rmind having the draw done, posted and safely home! (please note this is not a complaint, we are just puzzled). I wonder if today could have had something to do with people wanting to watch..

After the experience of Helensburgh 3 years ago, we thought it might be prudent to put the match on one of the TVs.  Good idea in practice but I could not find an HDMI cable anywhere to connect my tablet to the TV.  Sadly players had to crowd round my tablet to watch Andy roar to victory :D  Well done Andy!!!

Of course the downside is it is in the playing hall and we had to be silent.

Today has been a massive improvement on yesterday.  Lets face it, it could not have been any worse :p  I checked the house last night and found 4 cat 5 cables which meant we could have 12 boards today!   Popping into work tomorrow to grab some more so I can wire up the remaining boards giving us a total of 16.

On the playing front, we have three leaders on 2/2.  Matthew Turner, Andy Muir, Andrew Newton and our perpetual champion, Roddie McKay

Of interest in the chasing pack is young Lukah Connolly-Sams.  Lukah is graded a mere 1498.  I say mere as he has scored 1.5/2 against a 1800 and a 2101!  Tomorrow sees Lukah facing a titled opponent in IM Mark Orr.  I'll be watching that one with interest.

In the 7 day tournament we have the two leaders playing against each other.  James Watson and George Murphy

In George Square (see, George is such a Gentleman, they named a Square in Glasgow after him), we have the Homeless World Cup.  All day we have been treated to various national anthems and some really good support.  Sounds like a fantastic event (and it is free to get in).  It goes on for another week and I would recommend popping along if you get the chance.

Overall not a bad day at all.  No real disasters and everything running smoothly.  It won't last :D

Time for a bit of relaxation, some football on the TV and up early to go and get the remaining cables for tomorrow

Scottish Championships 2016 - Day 1 - "AAAAAAAnnd, always look on the bright side of life...."

"Some things in life are bad, &nbspThey can really make you mad
Other things just make you swear and curse
When you're chewing on life's gristle Don't grumble, give a whistle
And this'll help things turn out for the best...
And... ...
always look on the bright side of life...

I knew this was going to be a challenging week.  Getting in at 23:00 the night before from working abroad is really not the best preparation for an event.  So here I am today, tired from lack of sleep, grumpy 'cos I can be and hungry as I have not eaten in 24 hours (that will be the third time this week I have gone 24 hours between meals.  Cue GLW {Good Lady Wife} giving me an ear bashing later when she reads this!).

 Nothing has gone right all day.  I slept in (yep, you are reading that correctly, I actually slept).  Arrived late this morning as I slept in meaning I could only get one set of batteries charged instead of the hopeful 2 giving me 6 of our boards and horror of horrors, totally misunderstood an email from the Boss who was trying to remind me to bring Lan cables for the boards.

I did wonder what that mail meant :D

So here we are with 3 boards trying to transmit (I say trying as board 2 is trying not to...)
Yes its that time of the year where Alex and I try to out do each other to see who can be the most tired at the end of the 9 days :D

This year we have 61 brave souls battling it out to wrest the crown of Scottish Champion from Neil Berry's head

Bring it on!!

We have perpetual Champion Roddie McKay playing as well, hoping to add yet another Scottish crown to his rather large collection

It is going to be a fun filled 9 days with laughter, disaster and much merriment :D  Hope you all enjoy the ride this year!

National Championships 2016 - Oh Boy!

You can tell it is just going to be one of those days.  Your lift turns up unexpectedly 30 minutes early.  Chief Organiser sleeps in, and there is what sounds like a radio roadshow next door to the venue.

To cap it all off, not one but two boards decide that they don't want to work properly.  Caissa must be really displeased with me.

The good news is I have a vantage point over board 2 so I can keep it up to date.  The bad news is I am going to kill players who keep standing in my view :D

So here we are in surprisingly sunny Grangemouth.  It is a beautiful day and we have 3 ties.  In the Richardson, Bon Accord face Edinburgh.  The Spens sees Kilmarnock against Wandering Dragons and in the Cambell Rosebowl, Castlehill face Edinburgh Civil Service.

Kilmarnock fancied their chances and sportingly gave Wandering Dragons a 1 point lead by only turning up with 4 players.  Lets see how that one pans out.

The National Team Championships see the best teams fielding 8 person teams in a knock out format, akin to the Scottish Cup competing for a trophy that was created when Methuselah was a young lad

Next we have the Spens, that is a 5 board team (it used to be 6 but was changed as it means you can get a single team in a car).  This is not the original trophy, having gone missing during World War II, It is still an old trophy and this year is probably the first time I have ever seen it clean!  It is named after Sheriff Walter Cook Spens who was one of the founders of Chess Scotland back in 1884

Finally, we have the Campbell Rosebowl for the teams who lost in the first round of the Spens.

I have "played" in the Spens final when we won back in 2010.  I was the team captain and my opponent didn't turn up :D

oard No	East Kilbride				Troon
	Colour	Name	Grade	Score	Name	Grade	Score
1	W	A Jelfs	1872	½	J Calder	1846	½
2		P Thomas	1809	½	R Templeton	1750	½
3		T Dunlop	1649	1	L Weir	1588	0
4		T Brisbane	1485	0	F Park	1455	1
5		D Thomas	1303	½	M Chapman	1406	½
6		A Howie	1361	1	Default	0	0
			Total	3½		Total	2½

 Ah the memories :D

So back to today.  No real issues other than a couple of boards deciding to misbehave.  C'est la vie!

Edinburgh Chess Club won the Richardson with a rather convincing 7-1 win over Bon Accord

Wandering Dragons won the Spens, 3-2 with that defaulted game proving to be the clincher

Edinburgh Civil Service won the Rosebowl, they drew the game 2.5-2.5, first tie break is board count that finished 7-7, second tiebreak is bottom board elimination which gave them the win, was nearly a square go in the carpark to decide that one!!

 
Well at least someone was happy at the results!

SNCL Round 7 - Tiebroken to the Nth Degree

Inverclyde and Giffnock chess clubs will be forever in my bad books after todays finish to the SNCL season.

Whilst all the focus was on the Division 1 playoff between Dundee City A and Edinburgh, All Inverclyde had to do was to draw.  No they had to lose against the league leaders in a match that had a draw claim that I could not see as I had an optical migraine.  Really funny having to ask Donald Wilson what is going on as I could not see the clocks :D  Thankfully it came out a draw in the end (phew).

Steps were losing to Edinburgh 2, so what were Giffnock up to?  They were beating on Cumbernauld 4-1

So after entering the results, I saw 2 bemused captains before me.  They knew what was coming.

Tie break 1 - Game points. Yep they are the same

Tie break 2 - Game between the teams - well would you believe it, it was a draw

Tie break 3 - After a spate of teams coming short, we brought into the tie break rules that the team with the least defaults against them would win the tie break.  Whilst it was a good idea, neither here had had any.  Next...

Tie break 4 - Remove the bottom board from each match and recalculate (bottom board elimination)/  So after that they were still the same on match and game points.

Desperation time

Tie Break 5 - Sonneborn Berger.  Well what do you know, finally we can break the teams.

That was nearly the ubiquitous tie break of last resort.  The Square Go in the Car Park!


Why why why do we do this to ourselves :D