The club is now taking a break until the scheduled resumption of the season on 10 January. Meeting that schedule will of course depend on whether there is a further tightening of government restrictions on socialising in the next three weeks, and on what attitude the leagues in which Kingston plays take to the spread of the Omicron variant. Although the club is not holding any events, there is at present nothing to stop members from visiting the Willoughby Arms to play casual chess. The club will continue to monitor the Covid situation and will update the events calendar and issue further bulletins here as required. Happy Christmas and best wishes for a more buoyant New Year than we have enjoyed over the past 22 months.
Reflections on Surrey v Essex, 11 December 2021, at Cheam Parochial Hall
John Foley
Counties were organising major events long before the British Chess Federation was formed. Winning the county championship was regarded as a pinnacle of chess achievement – especially if you were from Middlesex or Lancashire, the most prodigious victors. The continuing importance of counties in the structure of English chess is illustrated by their right to vote on the ECF Council, the national decision-making body for chess. Chess clubs do not get a vote. If a club wants to raise a matter at council, its county must first be persuaded.
There has been a slow, long-term decline in the importance of county matches. The number of participating counties and the number of players per team has declined. The rise of the popular 4NCL weekend format has perhaps been a major factor. However, county chess still has its supporters who are prepared to turn out several Saturdays each year to show loyalty to their geographical locality. In a global age, many people prefer to identify with traditional ways to bind people together. Most sports tend to be organised regionally according to the county concept. In fact, I still support Middlesex for cricket because I grew up there.
Surrey has county teams at a variety of strength levels – open, under-180, under-160, under-140, under-120, under-100 (in old money) – so there is an opportunity for all club players to play in a representative match. This can be a memorable way to make one’s entry into the world of competitive chess. The matches are organised by the Southern Counties Chess Union.
There is stiff competition among the home counties around London. Middlesex, Essex, Kent and Surrey slug it out to reach the ECF finals stage, where they play victors from other chess unions. Usually, the county champions come from one of the two great conurbations around London and Manchester, but occasionally a smaller county snatches victory, especially in the grading-limited competitions. For example, Staffordshire are the reigning under-100 champions.
Surrey v Essex at Cheam Parochial Hall: Masks were obligatory and the boards were socially distanced
I played the game below on board 1 for Surrey in the under-2050 match against Essex last Saturday. I managed a victory, though the match overall was drawn 8-8. The counties are not active on social media, so you will need to consult the Results to find out whether Surrey make it to finals.
Due to Covid, the teams were reduced to 14 boards each on the day
I am acquainted with both players having captained Matthew Wadsworth when he was a junior playing for my 4NCL team and having known Peter Lalić from when we played a memorable game of chess in the Surrey League and subsequently since he joined Kingston Chess Club. Both players are talented and even a blitz game between them is always likely to be full of interest.
Peter Lalić won the Blitz Tournament at the London Chess Classic on Sunday 5 December with an impressive 9.5/11, half a point ahead of Harry Grieve and two points ahead of grandmaster Keith Arkell, who was the top-rated entrant (2398). This was the third blitz in a series of four in the London Classic festival.
Peter Lalic, taken at Kingston’s recent Alexander Cup victory over Epsom
The Classic is an annual event that brings the cream of international chess masters to London. Due to Covid, the Classic was cancelled last year, and this year it has had to be scaled down. The World Chess Championship in Dubai has also diverted the chess world’s attention away from London. The associated London Chess Conference which I direct has also been postponed until a more propitious date in the New Year.
The blitz tournaments are the only London Classic events which are open to all – the other events are invitation only. The entry fee is £15 and the time control is the nowadays unusual “all moves in five minutes”. This gives rise to some fraught disputes mainly about not placing the pieces in the centre of the square, which unfortunately was also the case during this event. The games were FIDE blitz rated. The first prize of £250 was the first prize money Peter, who took a sabbatical from competitive chess before making a welcome return in the summer, has won in seven years. With a performance rating of 2337, he will not have to wait very long until his next prize.
Peter’s path to victory was as difficult as it gets because he played against all of the top contenders. In round 3, he beat FM Tarun Kanyamarala, the young prodigy from Dublin, who won the 1st EJCOA Forest Hall Invitational event in Newcastle in October with a performance rating of 2508. In round 4, he beat FM Harry Grieve, a mathematics undergraduate at Cambridge who plays for the well-funded Guildford Young Guns 4NCL team and has been tipped by leading English trainer IM Andrew Martin as a future grandmaster. In round 5, he drew with the Canadian FM Tanraj Sohal, a pan-American blitz chess champion, who won the second blitz in the London Classic series 9/11 after drawing with Peter in the final round on the previous evening. In round 6, Peter lost to Keith Arkell, the ubiquitous chess weekender. This is the second time that Keith has beaten a Kingston player recently and plans are afoot to spring an anti-Arkell trap next time. In round 8, Peter defeated IM Ezra Kirk (2308), and in round 10 swept aside the young prodigy FM Shreyas Royal. By the time he reached the last round, there were no comparable players left to pair, and Peter faced Heinrich Basson from South Africa, who had scored 2.5 points fewer. Basson did not present any obstacle.
Peter has a remarkable memory for chess and was able to reconstruct all 11 of the games he played in winning the event. He also performed well in the second of the four London Classic blitz tournaments, and here is his victory in the penultimate round against Harry Grieve.
Healey runner-up at Golders Green
In a double success for Kingston players at the weekend, Mike Healey obtained second place behind Alexander Cherniaev at the Golders Green RapidPlay on Saturday 4 December, scoring 5/6. Mike lost to perennial winner Cherniaev at their encounter in the penultimate round.
The top board in a match is very often the last to finish and this game was no exception. The players were totally engrossed in this titanic struggle and were playing on the increment for most of the complex ending. The advantage changed hands several times, both players having eschewed a chance to take the drawing option. This win was Epsom’s only win in this knockout match and was very well deserved.
Peter Large (right) about to move against Mike Healey
Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi are under attack for producing a string of draws in the world championship. But their critics misunderstand the essence of the game
John Foley
The drawish nature of the games in the world championship is receiving adverse comment as usual. Apart from in the chess community, there does not seem to be much public interest in the match, in spite of many newspapers designating correspondents for the event. The trouble is that people don’t like draws. If presented as a sport, the public likes to hear about winning and losing, not a streak of draws.
Magnus Carlsen has played 48 games in the world championship finals, including matches against Anand (India) 2013/14, Karjakin (Russia) 2016, Caruana (USA/Italy) 2018, and the three games of the present match. Of these, 39 were drawn or 81%. By contrast, for all games in regular over-the-board competitions, Magnus has a drawing rate of 44% (per chessgames.com). So why are world championship games more drawish and should we worry?
The most straightforward explanation is that a title match is quite different from a normal tournament. The stakes are much higher and the nature of the contest is different. Both sides have teams of analysts who are working the silicon engine to wrench the minutest fraction of an advantage from the opening. The players are briefed on the latest developments and, provided their memories hold up, it is extremely rare for someone to completely surprise their opponent.
There is also the mutual familiarity of the players. They are well matched and have been jousting with each other since 2002, when Nepo won the under-12 world championship and Magnus was second. They know each other’s styles inside out. They know their strengths and weaknesses, and know what to prepare. Nepo has a lifetime plus score in classical games of 4-1 with 11 draws (69% draws). They have played more than 80 games together in all forms of chess.
On paper, there is not much to choose between the players. The betting gives Magnus the advantage, but, as the match progresses, the odds become more even because a single game can make all the difference. The match also gets more tense, so there is a greater chance of a mistake, which balances the odds.
The prize pot is €2 million, of which the winner gets 60%. So in effect, the money at stake is €400,000 (20% of €2 million). Both players are guaranteed €800,000, even if all games are drawn. There is no incentive for either player to go all-or-nothing on some risky opening. They are both comfortable whatever the outcome.
The real problem is that chess has been oversold as a spectator sport. We can be grateful to The Queen’s Gambit for stimulating extraordinary interest in the game. Chess can be played in stylish surroundings by smartly dressed, beautiful young people. However, chess has been raised on to a pedestal in Dubai, where it is exposed to the full glare of the world’s media. Journalists are looking for a story to tell the people back home.
We cannot blame the players for not playing in the 19th-century romantic style. Nor can we blame them for playing high-level, error-free, technical chess. These two players are the product of the computer engine age and will have exhaustively analysed virtually all the main openings. They don’t blunder.
It was different in the past. In 1972, Bobby Fischer was fighting the cold war against Boris Spassky. In 1983/84 Garry Kasparov was fighting the faltering Soviet system. The new generation is fighting a battle we have yet to describe. Maybe the underlying story is about which strand of artificial intelligence is going to dominate. The Red Queen evolutionary battle between, say, Stockfish and Alpha Zero is being played out by teams of computer scientists feeding ideas to the diligent seconds.
Some commentators have suggested speeding up the play – maybe one hour each for the game. This artificially enhanced excitement should be avoided. At least with slowplay time controls, the quality of the moves is uniformly high. There is no point in choosing a time control to generate more errors. I want games that are strategic masterpieces rather than resolved through tactical oversights; protein rather than sugar.
The players can never give the world what it wants, at least not as represented by the media. The public wants results, excitement, drama, a circus. In truth, chess is an inner game, a game of the soul and the mind, a striving towards perfection. If a player feels good about their game, their cognitive and emotional struggle, the ebb and flow of optimism and pessimism, and maintaining the will to win, then they have done their job. If they produce a game for the anthologies, then we should all regard that as a bonus. Chess is not for spectators and, truth be told, it is not even a sport.
In this Torre attack, Black plays passively and White induces some pawn weaknesses leading to the destruction of Black’s queenside. The outcome of this game was not critical to the match as Kingston had already won.
John Saunders, erstwhile editor of Chess magazine, thought this win by John Bussmann was the game of the match. He writes: “Admittedly his opponent made a couple of positional howlers in the opening, but John’s exploitation of the opportunity was immaculate. If someone had shown me the score of this game and told me that Mickey Adams or Keith Arkell had been Black, I would have believed them.”
