The Tournament

In the very first club Rapid tournament held in Anstey Chess club, four players faced each other in a Round-Robin format with ten minutes on the clock for each player. In the first round, Mike and Boris finally played against each other for the first time, yet after exchanging most of their pieces, they reshuffled some rooks to end up with a draw. Next to them, Oskar and Valdis engaged in a tactical battle and both expended substantial amount of time. Valdis ended being the more considerate and unfortunately for our second team captain, he got flagged (word used to say that his time ran out which equates to loss in chess).

In the second round, Mike played as black against Valdis in a hectic game where the challenger for Top player of the leagues season managed to blunder a rook. In the end the position was too difficult to hold on and Valdis happily boxed in another point to stay in the lead with 2 points. Boris and Oskar engaged in a typical rushed battle where Boris managed to get the most of his new opening repertoire with White following the Jobava London and created enough havoc to get the win, trailing Valdis by a point.

The third round featured the match between the tactical player Oskar against the always solid Mike. The latter proved his relevance in the top of the Top player table and methodically imposed himself over the second team captain, who had a bad day on the office. In the ‘winner takes all’ game Boris managed to trick Valdis who fell victim to a discovered attack which ended being the decisive moment, therefore, leaving Boris as the winner of the tournament.

The simul

Shortly after the emotions of the tournament had worn off, Julian decided to challenge himself and play a simultaneous exhibition against all four of the tournament players. As the top ECF ranked player in the club, Julian managed to hold on in the opening rushing around the tables yet always playing the best moves. It is worth mentioning that he played all games as Black as well, however, had. 30 mins per game compared to 15 mins for each of his four opponents. Once the openings were set up, all four players with White slowly found themselves in a trouble and sloy and methodically Julian imposed his superior strategic and tactical understanding of the game and eventually won all four games in a straightforward manner, further consolidating himself as ‘Mr. Engine’. Congratulations to Julian for being the first to have done it at club night.

“Hand and Brain”

The evening finished with the good old “Hand and Brain” game. The game is played by teams of two people where(surprisingly) one is the “Brain” and the other is the “Hand”. The Brain decides on what type of piece is moved and tells to the Hand whether to move a pawn, Knight, bishop, etc. The Brain however can only say the piece’s name and is forbidden to specify square, which piece exactly etc. The latter is decided by the Hand who makes a move of his choice with the same type of piece and is also responsible for pressing the clock.

The game was between Mike and Valdis as Black against Boris and Oskar as White. After his great performance in the simul, Julian decided again to step back and enjoy the “Expert’s spot” (meaning watching from the side and making noises such as ‘wow’ and ‘tsk tsk’). Mike and Valdis started with a strong attack and up on time due to the Brain(Valdis) helping out the Hand(Mike) with the clock duties, illegally of course. Boris and Oskar were playing like a well-oiled machine until a point where Boris decide that the best course is chasing their opponents’ knight with a pawn move, but the Hand (Oskar) never understood what is the Brain on about so just took so much space, it got Mike and Valdis into time trouble and they were eventually flagged.

In the end, another great evening in the Anstey Chess Club, full of combinative and strategical play, entertainment and lots of fun for every aspiring chess enthusiast. If you want to be part of such evenings, pop over to the Anstey Methodist Church every Thursday at 7:30pm. All abilities welcome!

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