4NCL - Guildford wins again

The 2013/2014 4NCL season (the UK's teams tournament), ended like it did in the previous year, with Guildford finishing ahead of Wood Green after winning their final round match against there closest rivals. The 'Big 2' once again dominated the event, with a slew of GM's turning out for both teams. There final round match up was incredibly strong with Guildford averaging  2656 over 8 boards, slightly ahead of Wood Green who only averaged 2647! But while the ratings might have predicted a close match, Guildford easily won 6-2 to take the title.
Of the remaining teams, White Rose did the best, finishing in third place, and qualifying for the European Club Championships. This was more a team of 'part timers' although they did ship a couple of GM's (including GM Dejan Bojkov) for the crucial matches. Note should be made of the performance of WIM Sue Mararoa Jones, who scored her first IM norm, as well as her first WGM norm, while playing for White Rose.
Full results of the event can be found at http://www.4ncl.co.uk/


Jones,Gawain - Laznicka,Victor [B19]
4NCL, 05.05.2014

Zombie Chess?

My son was relating to me a dream he has the other night, where he became a Zombie Chess GM.  In the dream he was playing a Grandmaster, who also happened to be infected by a zombie virus. By playing the ZGM he also became a Zombie, with the side effect that his chess ability improved to GM level. I'm not really sure this is part of Zombie canon, as no ones brain seemed to get eaten, but at least some of the elements are there.
Doing a little research on the topic I came across more than one ruleset for 'Zombie Chess'. Some involve resurrecting captured pieces, some involve the shambling hordes, and some involve special pieces. Not having time to go through them I'll throw my own (possibly already invented) game into the mix.
Simple rules: White plays as normal humans, Black is the zombie army. Zombies move one square forward or diagonally forward. Any piece captured by a zombie becomes a zombie (occupying the square that the capturing zombie moved off). Any zombie captured is removed from the board. Humans win by capturing all zombies. Zombies win by getting a zombie to the back rank.
Is the game playable? No idea!

A fortunate misunderstanding

One of the players who took part in the 2014 O2C Doeberl Cup was untitled Chinese player Ke Mu. Despite his low rating (2325) he had a fantastic tournament, scoring a GM norm at the Doeberl, and missing an IM norm at the SIO by 3 rating points (TPR of 2447).
But he mat have been helped by a misunderstanding early on at the Doeberl. It was mentioned by a couple of people that he had already scored enough GM norms for the title, but was just waiting for his rating to catch up. The claim had a ring of plausibility about it, as he had started with a very low FIDE rating early on, and players preparing for him remarked how strong his play looked.
Possibly this reputation as a GM strength 2300 player helped Ke Mu, as his opponents might have been extra wary of him. But when talking to him at the SIO I discovered that the claim of multiple GM norms was not true, and he was not aware of it himself. In fact the GM norm at the Doeberl was not only his first GM norm, but also counted as his first ever IM norm. But he clearly showed himself to be playing at a higher level than his rating, including the following win over current Australian Champion IM Max Illingworth.


Mu,Ke - Illingworth,Max [D41]
O2C Doeberl Cup Premier Canberra (6.6), 19.04.2014

British Pathe

On the 17th April, the newsreel company British Pathe made over 85,000 historical clips available on youtube. The clips cover the big events of the 20th Century, with the earliest clips dating from 1890.
Of course I checked out what chess clips they had, and they quite an interesting collection. There are a number of famous chess players featured, although the biggest collection seems to focus on Soviet Championships from the 1950's and 1960's. There is coverage of the 1958 and 1961 World Championships (both won by Botvinnik), but the one event I could not find was the 1972 Fischer v Spassky World Championship Match.
You can either head over to youtube to find the clips but probably easier way of finding what you are after is to go directly to the British Pathe website. While I went looking for chess, I'm pretty sure there are plenty of other interesting topics to explore.

One and a half moves

If you are just starting out in chess, or trying to teach other people how to play well, then simply looking one and a half moves ahead might be all you need to focus on. This is the system recommended by Charles Hertan in his book "Power Chess for Kids", and like a lot of good ideas, its strength is in its simplicity.
The subtitle of the book is "Learn how to think ahead and become one of the best players in your school", and clearly shows the market he is after.
I am often surprised at the number of new players who seem to focus on complicated opening theory, or 5 move combinations, when simply finding the one mover's is enough. In Hertan's book he even makes it simpler than that, by suggesting you focus on finding the third move in a capturing sequence  (which he calls 'takes, takes, bang!'). And based on my own experience, this is not only a step up from 'I move, ... ,then I move again', but would result in vastly improved results from your average school chess player.

"Sgt. Pepper's" - an album to learn chess to

Despite being quite The Beatles fan in my youth, I just discovered a chess/Beatles cross over I was not aware of before. According to Ringo Starr, he found his drumming talents rarely called upon while recording "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" , so much so he had a lot of spare time in the studio. He is quoted as saying "The biggest memory I have of Sgt. Pepper ... is I learned to play chess"
Of course you normally don't learn chess on your own (at least in those days), so I wonder who taught him to play?

Does one move make a game?

I was watching the following game during the last round of the 2014 Sydney International Open. Of course this was because one of the players was my son, but also because of the choice of opening (the Frankenstein-Dracula variation). Having played the black side of of it on occasion I was interested to see how it would turn out. Once White played 7.h4 I figured it would be a routine hack down the h file with an eventual mate on h7 or h8.
By the time I returned to the game the players reached move 20, and to my surprise Black had weathered the attack and looked to be a solid pawn up. It was then that White uncorked 21.Rxd5 which on the surface looks like a brilliant move. Certainly it posed enough problems for Black that White looked liked he'd reached a winning ending after lots of material was exchanged, and when I saw the players shaking hands I'd assumed Black had resigned. In fact White had offered a draw on move 30 and Black had wisely accepted.
Analysing the game later (with the help of an engine) it turned out that both sides had better moves, but if they had played them, it would have been a completely different (and less interesting) game. And most likely, White would not have had the opportunity to play Rxd5!!.

Puccini,Jack - Press,Harry [C27]
SIO Sydney, 27.04.2014