Winners and losers celebrating in the pub

The annual Broadstairs Blitz took place at the club on Monday July 3rd. When many clubs are well into their ‘close season’, Broadstairs is still going and with three competitions yet to be decided, the club will remain open until August 14th. Last year the it was the Brexit Blitz and as it is hard to avoid the soap opera that is modern politics, this year the theme was was the Blunder Blitz: Superman v Blunder Woman  – no prizes for guessing who this was based on. Sixteen players, all from Broadstairs Chess Club, were divided into two teams, the Supermen and the Blunder Women. The teams were picked on current grades and on recent form it looked as if the the Blunder Women had the edge with Ian Hames and Paul Carfrae, Blitz specialists, on the same team. However, it did not work out that way.

The first two rounds were close with few surprises and the scores were level. In round 3 the Supermen took the lead and never looked back.   Further wins in rounds 4 and 6 extended their lead and in the final round, with the Blunder Women needing a 7-1 victory to win, the Supermen had their best round, winning 6-2.  Final scores: Supermen 36½ Blunder Women 27½.  Highlights of the evening were fine performances from David Faldon, 8/8 on Board 1 for the Supermen, and 4/8 for Joshua Vaughan (grade 86) for the same team. Your correspondent still cannot quite understand how he lost to Ian Hames, allowing his king to be taken with one second left on the clock.  The post mortem concluded that the Blunder Women lost because they made too many blunders. Afterwards most of the players adjourned to pub to celebrate another successful season: steady membership, victory in the Team Buzzer and the Thanet Shield and joint winners at the Jamboree.

Supermen: David Faldon, Alan Gosman, Bob Page, Andy Flood, Joshua Vaughan, Michael Jenkinson, Fredy Reber, Jordan Leach.

Blunder Women: Nick McBride, Ian Hames, Paul Carfrae, Reg Pidduck, Bob Cronin, Michael Doyle, Richard Bowles, David Clifford.

 

 

In 1936 the second Margate International Chess Tournament took place and, once again, the former World Champion, Jose Raul Capablanca, was invited and accepted. The good news for Capa was that there was no Reshevsky but the bad news was that he was second again. The winner was the Czech GM Salomon Flohr who was undefeated in the tournament, scoring 7½/9 and winning more than half of his matches. Also returning from the first tournament were Stuart Milner-Barry, Vera Menchik and Sir George Thomas.

      The England team for the 1939 Olympiad

Milner-Barry was one of the most gifted British chess players of his generation. Winning the first British Boys’ Championship in 1923, he went on to play for England from 1937-1961 and was President of the British Chess Federation between 1970 and 1973. He also has two chess variations named after him: the Milner-Barry Gambit against the French Defence, and the Milner-Barry variation of the Nimzo-Indian Defence. His most important contribution, however, was his work as a code-breaker during the war at Bletchley Park for which he was recruited by his friend and fellow chess player, Hugh Alexander. At Margate in 1936 Milner-Barry lost only three games out of the nine, two of which were to Capablanca and this one to the eventual winner.

White: Salomon Flohr       Black: Stuart Milner-Barry

Margate International Chess Tournament 1936

Never mind about Norway, I hear you say, what about Broadstairs? Well, as everyone knows, the club continues until the Thanet Chess Congress – still plenty of room: see http://www.thanetchesscongress.co.uk for further details – and the various club competitions are nicely coming up to the boil. In the Goodall Cup, the blue riband of Broadstairs club competitions, it is looking like a two-horse race between David Faldon and Nick McBride unless Ian Hames can win all his remaining seven games, six of which are against players in the top half of the draw. David might have expected at least a share of the trophy after Nick’s surprise defeat by Bob Page earlier in the season but Bob threw another spanner in the works by swindling a draw against David in their match. This means that victory for Nick in his match against David may give him the cup outright.

Two of the five rounds of the Summer Swiss have been played with Nick, Bob and Paul Carfrae the only players on two points. These scores are, of course, irrelevant as the prize goes to the player with the best grading performance over the five rounds. If past history is anything to go by, this is unlikely to be the player with the highest score.  The knockout tournament for the John Couzens Vase is at the quarter-final stage and victory here is anyone’s guess as it is a time handicap where it is not unusual to find strong players given only ten minutes against weaker players’ one hour fifty! Finally, on July 3rd there is the traditional end of season event, the Broadstairs Blitz after which we hope as many members as possible will join us in the pub to celebrate the club’s successes in the Team Buzzer and Jamboree tournaments.

         “Look, a blank cheque!”

One of the trophies awarded at the Thanet Congress is the Oyster Shield which goes to the Thanet player with the highest score in either the Minor or Intermediate sections. It was donated to the Congress by Whitstable Chess Club and the inaugural winner was our own Reg Pidduck and here he is collecting his trophy and cheque in 2011. This has become quite a custom for Reg because he has gone on to win the award on a further three occasions including the last two years so he’ll be aiming for a hat-trick at this year’s Congress which, don’t forget folks, is on August 18-20. (Mind you, he hasn’t entered yet…)

 

 

          Aronian beat Carlsen here last year

Most of the world’s best chess players are currently slogging it out at the Altibox Norway Chess Tournament in Stavanger. As is customary in these events, the opening rounds featured the usual shadow boxing as few risks were taken and draws dominated. In the first three rounds there were only two wins and thirteen draws. However, all this changed in Round 4 with three wins from the five matches. Without doubt, the one you will be reading about in the papers tomorrow and for some time to come, one suspects, is the remarkable victory by Lev Aronian over the World Champion, Magnus Carlsen. Peter Svidler, commentating for Chess 24, said that the game “…is hugely important because it features more or less everything that you would want from a chess game”. Aronian is from Armenia and for those of you unfamiliar with chess in that country and who would struggle to identify Armenia on a world map, you might be interested in the edition of ‘On Assignment’ shown last Wednesday (7th) on ITV which features a piece on how chess is both encouraged and financed in Armenia. My thanks to Michael Doyle for drawing my attention to this.

White: Lev Aronian (2793)   Black: Magnus Carlsen (2832)

Altibox Norway Chess 2017

 

 


While most of world’s leading chess players gather in Stavanger for the Altibox Chess Tournament, it is worth looking back to a time when a Thanet club was the centre of the chess world. Sadly, it was not Broadstairs but for five years in the 1930s Margate managed to attract some of the strongest players in the world to compete in a series of international chess tournaments. The first of these was held in the Grand Hotel in 1935 and featured the former world champion Jose Raul Capablanca, the American prodigy Sammy Reshevsky and a number of British stalwarts including Stuart Milner-Barry, Sir George Thomas and Vera Menchik. Not surprisingly, Capablanca was favourite to win but his defeat by Reshevsky was decisive and the American went on to win the tournament with an unbeaten score of 7½/9.

White: Samuel Reshevsky   Black: Jose Raul Capablanca

Margate International Chess Tournament 1935