The Bristol Winter Congress was held at Bristol Grammar School Nov 25-27th.

There were 82 players in the 3 section. Graham Mill Wilson was arbiter. Rosie from Hereford provided the catering.

FIDE RATED OPEN

The Open was won by local player and second seed Daniel Malkiel with 4/5. He has been playing for Horfield chess club since arriving from America 12 months ago. After losing to Daniel, top seed Chris Beaumont IM said, “I can’t get out of the opening against this guy.”

There were 4 local players on equal second. M Payne (Bath), Bicknell (S Bristol), Dilleigh (Horfield) and C Beaumont (Clifton). The grading prize went to Manuel Jiminez with 3/5. Before the congress, he said he would be happy with 2/5- so well done, Manuel. The British Qualifying place is yet to be determined.

MAJOR

The Major was surprisingly won by Tim Jones and Alice Lampard on 4/5, both graded under 140 in the U155 section. (£125 each) Second prize was shared by the 2 top seeds, N Towers and R Ashworth. (£40 each ) The Ashworth family had a player in every section.The grading prize was won by local junior chess coach, Chris Strong.

MINOR

The Minor was won by Downend player, Grant Daly who was outgraded by 20 points by the top seed in second place Edward Ko. Third place was shared by 4 players, including Behzad Parnian who made the trip from Grimsby.

For more details on the results and prices please check the Bristol Chess Congress website.

Well, where to start with this one? We were missing James, but even so this was not a good performance. I could easily express that sentiment more strongly, as indeed I did in the pub afterwards. Never mind, it’s nearly Christmas.

On top board I had an interesting opening with Dan, but I couldn’t remember the lines at all. Instead of playing safe I went for a tactical solution that failed, leaving me with a horrid position. While waiting for the inevitable, I amused myself working out the various ways Dan could win, and he eventually went for the simplest (if not the prettiest) solution. Fair dos, Dan played well.

Gareth was on the white side of a QGA, but to my eyes it didn’t look like a good version for him. He accepted an isolated passed pawn, but it was well blocked and black was very active. Aaron gradually surrounded it, and the tactics that Gareth went for didn’t work. Tactics not working seems to be somewhat of a theme for the team this year.

Dunc and Michael played a complex looking game from a Hippo. I couldn’t really work out who was better for most of the game. Dunc was a pawn up, then the exchange up, but I’m not sure how relevant that was. In the end Michael had two connected passed pawns, the Dunc could do nothing to stop them.

On board four David and Alex were locked in one of their manoeuvring battles. They reached an endgame where Alex had the two bishops but a worse pawn structure. Watching them probing around was rather like watching Carlsen v Karjakin, but I’m not sure which was which. Unsurprisingly it ended peacefully.

From early in their game Steve had a stranglehold on Igor’s position. Igor had a big hole on d5, which at one point was occupied by a knight, and defended by five other pieces. Nimzowitsch would be proud. Despite that, it wasn’t clear how to break through, so when a tactic appeared Steve happily took an exchange. The downside of this was that Igor got a pawn on c6 to cover his hole, and his game freed up. It looked pretty level to me, but as is often the case a blunder decided the game.

There is a dispute about board six, so I won’t say anything about that. It obviously won’t affect the match result, and I’d like to congratulate Horfield on their play: they duffed us up good and proper.

On another note, apologies for the lack of a match report for the Clifton A v B match, clearly none of my team mates thought to write one. I was busy playing in the Guernsey tournament, which was great fun. I’d recommend it to anyone, and if you’re lucky you may get to play (and lose to) two GMs, which was what happened to me. I did win a few other games though, and also ate a lot of prawns.

UPDATE: The dispute on board six was amicably resolved, and has been agreed a draw. The final result is 5-1 to Horfield. We will lick our wounds and return to fight another day.

It has long been one of our foibles that we often struggle against B teams, and this was no exception as we fought out a drawn match against the Bs of Horfield. A number of the games finished quite early, and often abruptly, and I’m not quite sure what happened at the end of some of them, which means this may be even more inaccurate than usual.

David was playing a dull-looking London system type game against Rob, with a early queen swap. When they finished early I assumed they’d shaken on a draw, but apparently David had somehow been mated. I have no idea how that happened. James finished soon after, smoothly outplaying Mike.

Gareth looked a bit better against Peter in what looked like a Kalashnikov Sicilian, although I find it hard to believe that Peter didn’t play his normal English opening. Next time I looked Gareth had won and the players were on the way out. I have no idea what happened. Dunc drew with John at about the same time after a balanced game.

Igor seemed to be struggling from early on against Phil, who had both a better structure and more active pieces. Igor fought hard, but Phil played well to notch up the point. Again, I missed the denouement, so don’t know exactly what happened at the end.

I do know what happened in my game. I felt I was a bit better all the way through, with slightly better development and a bit more space. It wasn’t much though. It swapped down to a heavy piece ending, where despite persistent probing I couldn’t find a way through. I decided to take the offered draw, after a long think, since I was in serious danger of over pressing and being worse.

I guess Horfield will be happier with the result than us, but it was a very fair result. Horfield have a string of good players, and I think they’ll comfortably avoid the drop this season

JC

Our first match for a month, after South Bristol defaulted against us last week (I’ll have more to say about that another time). This was the University’s first match of the season, so were somewhat of an unknown quantity. My thoughts on the games below, with the usual proviso that I’m likely to be completely wrong about much of it.

Igor finished first, after a promising looking opening simplified into a level ending.

My game finished soon after that. Philipp missed a well hidden but rather devastating tactic that won two juicy queenside pawns, and from then on I just had to be a bit careful. The game simplified into an opposite-coloured bishop ending, and while these can often be drawish, in this version I had three connected passed pawns, and even I can win from there.

James did what James often does: playing sensible looking moves that eventually led to a nice win, without Bogdan seeming to do much wrong. The final combination was clever, and nicely geometrical.

Dominic faffed about with his pieces for a while, and may have been a little worse, but he eventually got his bits pointing at Luka’s king, and played a nice knight sac to open the position up. He won the piece back, then played a series of very good moves to reach an overwhelming position. Unfortunately he then had a slight mishap, changing the position from overwhelming to merely winning, but with only 40 seconds left he (probably sensibly) took the offered draw. A shame, because it was nearly brilliant.

Dunc’s game was complex: he sacced a pawn, then a tactical flurry gave him two rooks against a queen with two knights each. It boiled down to the two rooks against the queen, plus pawns each. I thought that Dunc had any winning chances that may be there, but the players clearly disagreed, with Dunc the one forcing the draw. I expect they were right.

Finally, Gareth and Mark had a long manoeuvring game, with Mark looking a bit better. Gareth lost/sacced a pawn, but gained the two bishops. Mark was still better, but a draw was looking most likely, when he blundered first a key pawn, then a knight on consecutive moves. A slightly sad way for the match to end, but these things happen.

A fairly comfortable win in the end then, albeit with a few small scares. I’m quite glad we played them early in the season; University have some talented players who will only get better. Another good sign was that in the (much improved) bar there were a dozen or so other people playing chess. Maybe there’s still some hope for the human race.

JC

Our title defence started with a tough match against a very strong Downend side.

David was the first to finish, after a short and placid game with Jerry. Not much to write about there. Nick and Nigel then also drew after a correct looking QID. Nick hasn’t played much recently, and it was good to see him back and playing well.

Dunc had an IQP position against Stephen, but not a particularly active one. The game seemed balanced though, until a mixture of vague play by Dunc and good play by Stephen led to a black advantage. The last I saw was Dunc giving up a rook, presumably to try to get a perpetual. It didn’t work.

My game finished next. Chris played very aggressively, including a piece sacrifice for a couple of my kingside pawns. He also had an unopposed bishop pointing at my king; the kind of bishop that chess players dream about. I wasn’t sure who (if anyone) was better, but I felt that I should be at least ok. It was easier to play for me too, since I spent most of the game just responding to Chris’s threats. We both got a bit short of time, Chris missed a tactic and then being a rook down, resigned. I think I’ll put that win down more to luck than judgement.

James played a French against Henry, with some early queenside expansion. It looked to me that Henry always had it under control, and one of the advanced pawns eventually dropped off. He then negotiated the traditional time scramble to secure the point.

Last to finish was Gareth. Richard seemed slightly better throughout, with a better pawn structure. Grim defence should have been the order of the day, but Gareth went for a sacrificial tactical solution instead. It didn’t work.

So, 4-2 to Downend, which is a fair reflection of the match. They must be favourites for the League this year, but as we found last year, the unexpected often happens.

JC

The Bristol Steve Boniface Memorial Congress was held Aug 26-28th at Bristol Grammar School in Clifton, Bristol. There were 65 players in total in the 3 sections. We were hoping for more, but the Indian Summer proved too much of a temptation for some. As usual, personalized catering was from Rosie of Hereford.

There were 16 players in the Open; 6 with grades over 2100. As expected, it was a battle between our 2 titled players, GM Keith Arkell and local IM Chris Beaumont. They met in round 4 after each with 3 wins. Keith was hoping for revenge after his loss to Chris at the Cotswold Congress in May, but it was not to be. Chris had a dangerous passed pawn and that proved the decisive factor. Young Max French was there, just back 48 hours earlier from playing in the Vienna Open, as well as Keith Arkell. On a side note, Arkell is about to start a book, DVD and you tube video called ‘Arkell’s Endgames’, a speciality he is world famous for.

There were 22 players in the Major. It was won by joint top seed Craig Kennedy. Not surprising considering that in the last 5 years, his grade has been 10-30 points higher. Second place was won by local veteran Duncan Macarthur. The winner of our summer congress, V. Bovtramovics, finished tied for third.

Also tied for third, and winner of the junior prize, was 11 year old Chirag Hosdurga, already graded at 131.

There were 27 players in the Minor. It was won by Antony Sage from Bath, the second seed in the group. Joint second was 10 year old Toby Kan, sharing second with congress regular Martyn Maber from Taunton. Downend Chess Club had 3 promising juniors in the event, all finishing 50% or above: Kan, Stubbs and Tye. Ones to watch for the future.

Source: http://tim1949jones.wixsite.com/bristolchesscongress

The Prize winners are:

Well done to everyone who participated. We raised £100 for Macmillan Cancer Relief.

The Graeme Thomson Memorial rapidplay will be held Sunday July 3^rd at the Polish club.

Click here for entry form   http://www.chessit.co.uk/Rapidplay%20Events/GT%20Memorial/2016/GT%20Memorial%20Entry%20Form%202016.pdf

The Bristol Summer Congress June 10^th-12^th at Bristol Grammar School.

• 5 rounds.
• Central location.
• Free parking.
• Click here for entry form  http://www.chessit.co.uk/Congresses/Bristol%20Summer%202016/Bristol%20Summer%20Congress%202016.pdf

Bristol and Clifton A Team are the new Bristol League Div 1 champions!

The B Team were also promoted back into Div 1!