HAMPSHIRE CHESS ASSOCIATION

 


Hampshire Chess Association Newsletter     January 2003

Volume 4 Issue 2/2


Introduction

Well I hope you all had a good Christmas and are looking forward to the rest of the season. This newsletter will cover the recent Hampshire Congress, an update on the County and League situation and an annotated game from the New Hampshire Individual champion, Michael Yeo.

Leagues

The Southampton and Portsmouth Leagues are at about the halfway stage, with Cosham A and Gosport A looking the likely candidates in Portsmouth Division One. Whilst in Southampton Division One, Southampton A look like they are in the best position, but Passed Pawn A and reigning champions Stoneham A (formerly Eastleigh Unity) are also in the hunt.

Games

The Hampshire Congress (see separate report) produced a number of excellent games this year. The winner Michael Yeo has kindly supplied one of his wins, with extensive analysis.

Rather than repeat the game from the Hampshire Congress, play through the game here.

Hampshire Congress

This Hampshire Congress, incorporating the Hampshire Individual Championship was held the weekend of 1st November 2002 at Eastleigh College.  The format was the same as the previous year, with an Open and an under 125 graded tournament. The trend in numbers was positive, with a slight increase seen in total. 

Keeping the tradition of the last two years, the winner of the Open Tournament  (Thomas Rendle) did not enter this year, although the Hampshire Champion, Dominic Tunks was defending his title. 

The first couple of rounds did not spring many surprises, although in round two, two of the top seeds failed to get maximum points. This was as Khaled Esmat (169) held Michael Yeo (202) to a draw and John Wheeler (170) beat David Pye (185).

In round three there were 4 players on maximum points, Bill Purkiss, Jeremy Fraser-Mitchell, John Wheeler and Martin Newbury. On board one Bill Purkiss beat Jeremy Fraser-Mitchell in 14 moves. It seems that Jeremy played a dubious move in the opening (7.Qb3) and after Bill's reply Nxd4, decided to really mix it up with 8.Bxf7, rather than move his Queen back to d1, where he obviously stood worse. After this Jeremy then sacrificed his Queen for two Knights, for which he was never going to get enough compensation, and resigned soon afterwards. This meant that the board one game was the first to finish and Bill was on maximum points.

 Fraser-Mitchell - Purkiss,W [D32]

1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 c5 4.cxd5 exd5 5.e4 dxe4 6.Bc4 Nc6 7.Qb3? Nxd4 8.Bxf7+ Ke7 9.Bxg8 Nxb3 10.Bxb3 Ke8 11.Nxe4 Qe7 12.f3 Bf5 13.Bg5 Qe5 14.Ne2 Bxe4 15.Bf4 Qxb2 0–1

Also moving onto maximum points was John Wheeler who defeated Martin Newbury. In fact, both Bill and John were 1 point ahead of the field, as none of the other players on 1½ managed to win their games.

Round four was the Saturday evening game and John Wheeler took a bye. This left Bill playing the up-floated Khaled Esmat in a game that was the turning point of the competition.

Khaled played an excellent game, beating Bill, which meant that John Wheeler was in the sole lead after the fourth round, with four players half a point behind.

Leader Board after Round Four

Name

Score

John Wheeler

3½/4

Bill Purkiss

3/4

Michael Yeo

3/4

Khaled Esmat

3/4

Martin Newbury

3/4

With all to play for in the 5th round, there were a lot of hard fought games. The board one game between John Wheeler and Bill Purkiss went the distance. I don't know if Bill won the exchange, or John sacrificed it, but John did get some compensation for it. In the end John won the exchange back, but agreed a draw in the Quickplay finish, when he had less time than Bill.

Martin Newbury was late for his game and suffered the price, losing on time against Michael Yeo from admittedly a bad position. Meanwhile Khaled Esmat was blundering all his pieces against Jeremy Fraser-Mitchell, in the same way that Jeremy had done against Bill Purkiss in round three and Khaled soon resigned

Coming into the last round, whoever won the top board game would win the tournament. John Wheeler probably only needed a draw from this game to win the Silver Rook, as his sum of progressive score was the best. Bill Purkiss, Jeremy-Fraser-Mitchell and Martin Newbury had to hope that the top board was drawn and for them to win, to share 1st prize.

The Yeo v Wheeler game was quite a bit of theory, but John's position started to fall apart when he played 12...c5. Instead of this 12...d5 looked stronger. This would have stopped Michael's Knight moving to e4 where it was very dominant. In fact, from there it moved into d6 and soon afterwards a tactical exchange won Michael a Rook and the Hampshire Championship. This was Michael Yeo’s first win of the Hampshire Championship, from 10 previous entries.

Yeo,M - Wheeler,J [B06]

Hampshire Congress 2002 (6), 03.11.2002

1.e4 g6 2.d4 Bg7 3.Nc3 d6 4.f4 c6 5.Nf3 Bg4 6.Be3 Nd7 7.h3 Bxf3 8.Qxf3 e6 9.0-0-0 Qa5 10.Kb1 Ne7 11.g4 0-0-0 12.Rd3 c5 13.e5 Nc6 14.Ne4 dxe5 15.Nd6+ Kb8 16.dxe5 Rhf8 17.Bg2 Bxe5 18.Nxb7 Qb6 19.Rb3 Nb4 20.Nxd8 Rxd8 21.fxe5 1-0

In the fight for 2nd place, Bill Purkiss and Jeremy Fraser-Mitchell won against Martin Newbury and David Cordner respectively and they therefore shared 2nd place.

Meanwhile four players shared the U160 grading prize, with Ian Cary taking home the trophy on tiebreak. Richard Perrin won the U140 grading prize. 

Prize Winners

1st

M.Yeo

5/6

£120

2nd =

W.Purkiss

4½/5

£60

2nd =

J.Fraser-Mitchell

4½/5

£60

U160 gp

I.Cary

3/6

£15

U160 gp

F.N.McLeod

3/6

£15

U160 gp

A.Mills

3/6

£15

U160 gp

G.Stuart

3/6

£15

U140 gp

R.Perrin

3/6

£50

The under 125 tournament that was run alongside the Open was a great success for ex Ladies Champion Gillian Moore, who has come back to chess after a break.

Gillian scored four wins and two draws from her six games, which was enough to win first prize outright. A.Hayes was second on 4½ points, whilst there were 5 players on 4 points. Darren Radford won the under 100 grading prize with 3½ points.

 

Prize Winners

1st

G.Moore

5/6

£90

2nd =

A.Hayes

4½/5

£60

3rd =

P.Marshall

4 /5

£6

3rd =

P.Flack

4 /5

£6

3rd =

R.Langham

4 /5

£6

3rd =

A.Mayer

4 /5

£6

3rd =

M.Garrod

4 /5

£6

U100 gp

D.Radford

3½/6

£40

 

Next year’s tournament will likely be around the same time; so don’t forget to leave some time for this in your diary.

 

County Chess

The County season has got off to a mixed start, with the B team beating Dorset, but the A team losing to Cornwall and Gloucestershire.

Meanwhile in the Chiltern League we beat Oxford and Berks, but lost to Bucks. The U125 team in the Chiltern League has had better success, winning all four games so far.

West of England Matches

Hants A beat Dorset B 7 – 5

Hants A lost to Cornwall 7½ - 8½

Hants A lost to Gloucestershire

 Chiltern League – U170

Hants beat Oxford 9½ - 6½

Hants beat Berks 12 – 8

Hants lost to Bucks 6½ - 9½

 Chiltern League – U125

Hants beat Oxford 10 – 6

Hants beat Berks 10 – 6

Hants beat Bucks 10½ - 5½

Hants beat Oxford 8½ - 7½ 

If you are interested in playing in any of the remaining matches, please contact the respective match captain.

West of England Team

Dominic Tunks        01730-302058      Dominic.R.Tunks@gtuk.com

Chiltern League U170 Team

Fraser McLeod         023-8073-5418      F.N.Mcleod@soton.ac.uk

Chiltern League U125 Team

Mick Garrod             023-9283-8506

Contributions

If anyone would like to publish an article, either for the newsletter, or the Web site, please supply by e-mail or post.

Graham Stuart                          G.B.Stuart@btinternet.com

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