{"id":1114,"date":"2015-02-09T09:58:10","date_gmt":"2015-02-09T09:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/?p=1114"},"modified":"2015-09-03T19:21:45","modified_gmt":"2015-09-03T18:21:45","slug":"kidlington-chess-congress-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/?p=1114","title":{"rendered":"Kidlington Chess Congress 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Once again a chilly weekend in February heralds the annual Kidlington Chess Congress.  Playing for the fourth year in the Under-180 section, I was looking to improve on last year&#8217;s 50% score.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Round One: I was drawn against a slightly lower graded, but very experienced opponent (he has played 175 graded games in the past 12 months!) and I had <strong>White<\/strong>.  It was a long game and fairly even although I felt I had a small edge. Just as we reached the 3.5 hour stage, and while both our clocks were below 5 minutes, he misjudged a Queen exchange to leave me with a clearly winning pawn endgame.  Nice to <strong>Win<\/strong> in the first round!<\/li>\n<li>Round Two: My prize for winning the previous game was a game with <strong>Black<\/strong> against one of the strongest players in my section.  I managed to keep the opening fairly solid, although I felt under pressure throughout the game. After three hours play we had only reached move 30 and I was down to under 3 minutes.  Soon he was in time trouble too and we blitzed out a further 30 moves in the next 5 minutes!  He missed an immediate win, but in the end it didn&#8217;t matter and he managed to play correctly to force a result in his favour shortly afterwards.  Shame to have <strong>Lost<\/strong> such a long game, but I felt that I played well and have no real complaints about this one.<\/li>\n<li>Round Three: The evening game for the first day paired me with <strong>White<\/strong> against a stronger player.  I deliberately played an unambitious opening in order to simplify quickly because I was tired from two 3.5-hours games earlier in the day, but he then played very strangely: after playing normally for the first 10 moves, he undeveloped nearly all his minor pieces which left me with a huge advantage in space and, eventually, his position was so cramped he had no good moves at all.  I used this advantage to force a win of material and he resigned almost immediately.  He could have played on for a bit, bishop or knight down, but presumably decided he&#8217;d had enough.  Very pleased to <strong>Win<\/strong> this one and end the day on 2 out of 3.  The game finished in under two hours as well, which is very fast for this type of tournament!<\/li>\n<li>Round Four: Day Two began with a game against a very strong and rapidly-improving 15-year-old boy.  I played one of the new openings I&#8217;d been studying for when I play <strong>Black<\/strong>, but perhaps didn&#8217;t choose the best variation. He had a good advantage heading into the endgame and I lost a pawn.  This would have eventually proved fatal if I&#8217;d just played &#8216;normally&#8217; so I mounted a last-gasp &#8220;bayonet charge&#8221; against his king, which was unfortunately repulsed.  Shame to have <strong>Lost<\/strong>, first time I&#8217;ve lost to a teenager since being one myself: but I was never graded this high at that time!  Interestingly, in my post-match computer analysis I found that I&#8217;d missed an astonishing move which would have saved the game and forced a draw!  We both missed this during the game and during the post mortem immediately after the game had finished. Pesky kids.<\/li>\n<li>Round Five: Going into the last round on 2 out of 4 I played <strong>White<\/strong> against another rapidly-improving child: although this one was only 10!  It&#8217;s easy to be complacent saying &#8220;Oh, he&#8217;s only 10&#8230;&#8221; but I had to remember that he had also managed to get to the score 2 out of 4 against similar opposition as me.  The game was very even but I managed to keep control enough to have a very tiny edge as we approached the endgame.  He had been playing very fast, however: at the critical moment, I had only 14 minutes left against his 38 minutes.  I had an opportunity to play for a win in a very uncertain, theoretical endgame: it was *probably* drawn, but I knew there was a very small chance of winning; equally, there were plenty of opportunities to go wrong and lose, quite likely in time trouble.  He actually offered a <strong>Draw<\/strong> and I gladly accepted.  The computer tells me that it was indeed possible to win but far from simple to do so.  I think I made the best decision, pragmatically.  Perhaps if I&#8217;d been in the running for a prize I might have been more tempted to play for a win, I suppose.<\/li>\n<p><div id=\"attachment_1115\" style=\"width: 330px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/anand-carlsen-from-above-e1423473663917.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1115\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/anand-carlsen-from-above-e1423473663917.jpg\" alt=\"Vishy Anand and Magnus Carlsen were playing in the Grenke Classic in Germany while we played in Kidlington.\" width=\"320\" height=\"213\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1115\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1115\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Vishy Anand and Magnus Carlsen were playing in the Grenke Classic in Germany while we played in Kidlington.<\/p><\/div><\/ul>\n<p>Like last year I ended on 2.5 out of 5, giving me 50%: I suppose that&#8217;s pretty reasonable, but it would have been nice to have a win on the second day.  Especially since the computer says I missed good moves in both those games.  On the other hand, I won because of unforced errors in two other games, so maybe all this stuff evens out in the end.<\/p>\n<p><strong>UPDATED 12.02.2015<\/strong> My game analysis with comments is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/chess\/kid2015.html\">here<\/a> and the full cross-table results for the U-180 section is <a href=\"https:\/\/kidlingtonchess.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/KCT2015-U180-Cross-Table.html\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Once again a chilly weekend in February heralds the annual Kidlington Chess Congress. Playing for the fourth year in the Under-180 section, I was looking to improve on last year&#8217;s 50% score. Round One: I was drawn against a slightly lower graded, but very experienced opponent (he has played 175 graded games in the past&#8230;&nbsp;(<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/?p=1114\">read more<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1114"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1131,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1114\/revisions\/1131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}