Bob and Carol were playing a game at their chess club’s new venue when Ted and Alice arrived.
They saw this position on the board.
“You seem to be missing a few pieces”, observed Ted. “Did we leave them back at the Adelaide when we moved to the Bowls Club?”.
“Maybe they’re practising their queenless middlegames in case they’re paired against Peter Lalic next time we play Kingston”, suggested Alice. “I presume it’s White to move here.”
“That’s right”, replied Bob. “I’m just about to play my 7th move. But the bar’s just opened. Can I get you both a drink?”
“While he’s gone”, said Carol, “can you work out how we reached this position playing six moves each?”
Well, can you help Ted and Alice work it out? If not, or even if you can, I’ll post the solution on Friday.
Two matches this week, in both of which we were outrated on every board, so it’s not surprising that we went down two two defeats.
On Tuesday our Thames Valley D team concluded their season with a home match against Surbiton C.
On Thursday our London League team faced one of the capital’s strongest teams. Cavendish 1 were headed by two grandmasters and outrated us by an average of 200 points a board.
They were too strong for us at the top, but our tail wagged vigorously, with excellent wins for Maks and Sampson along with creditable draws for Chris and Jon.
As always, thanks to all who played, and, most of all, to our captains.
Manny thanks to Mike and Maks for each demonstrating one of their recent games to us on our first evening at our new venue.
I’m sure everyone found them enjoyable and perhaps also inspiring.
They have kindly provided the games which we reproduce here.
Here’s Mike’s game. Click on any move for a pop-up window.
And here’s Maks’s game.
I also spoke briefly about my Chess Heroes project and demonstrated a mate in 2 problem from Chess Heroes Puzzles Book 2, now available online in pdf format.
#2 Shinkman, William Anthony 200 Bauernumwandlungs-Schachaufgaben, 1907
I’m sure you can find the solution yourself. You can find the complete book here and all my downloads here.
Our new venue will give us a lot more opportunities for providing coaching for our members.
If you have any suggestions, our Coaching Manager, Adrian Waldock, will be delighted to hear from you.
The 2026 FIDE Candidates Tournament is approaching its conclusion.
With two rounds to go, Javokhir Sindarov of Uzbekistan is two points clear in the Open tournament, so will almost certainly be playing a title match against Gukesh later in the year.
While the Open has been a procession, the womens’ tournament has been a lot closer, with four of the eight players still in contention.
Zhu Jiner of China and Vaishali Rameshbabu of India are both on 7/12, half a point ahead of Bibisara Assaubayeva of Kazakhstan and Anna Muzychuk of Ukraine.
Today’s puzzle is from the Round 10 game between Sindarov and Praggnanandhaa.
Sindarov (White, to play) has sacrificed a piece to create a strong pawn on e5 expose the black king. How did he continue here?
We had a great evening at our spacious new venue: Cambridge Park Bowling Club.
You’ll find us just behind St Stephen’s Church in East Twickenham, ideally situated half way between Richmond and Twickenham town centres. You’ll see the bus stop (buses from Richmond) right outside.
Here’s the pedestrian entrance you’ll be looking for.
On the other side of the bowling green you’ll find our friends at Richmond Bridge Club. If you play bridge as well as chess do check them out.
Here’s our playing room. The area at the back can be partitioned off for matches.
Drinks are available in the bar, and there are also facilities for tea and coffee.
Our Chairman Alastair Armstrong outlined his vision for developing the club as an integral part of the local community.
The evening continued with Mike Healey and Maks Gajowniczek each demonstrating one of their recent games. There was then a brief introduction to the Chess Heroes books followed by Mike giving a simul.
I’ll post more about the talks very shortly.
If you live within reach of Richmond or Twickenham and enjoy playing chess, we’d love to welcome you any Thursday evening from 7:30 onwards.
My latest Minor Piece tells the story of Harold Davidson, known as the Prostitutes’ Padre, who later met his death as the result of being mauled by a lion.
In his time at Oxford University, he was a strong chess player. Monday’s position was taken from his game against James Sawin, from the 1902 Anglo-American Universities Cable Match.
Davidson, playing White, should have played the move I’m sure you found, 25. Rc4, winning either the queen or the king.
A sample variation:
25. Rc4 Qf5 (the only safe square) 26. Rc7+ Kh6 (Kf8 or Kg8 would be met by Qd4) 27. Qd4 (Qc1+ also wins) 27… Qxb5 28. Qf4+ mating.
Unfortunately, he tried to be too clever, playing 25. Nh5, and, after a few more errors, lost a few moves later.
Here’s the complete game: click on any move for a pop-up window.
I hope you’re all enjoying the holiday weekend and looking forward to our first meeting at our new venue on Thursday.
Here’s a position for your consideration.
Black has a substantial material advantage, but White has a substantial attack.
It’s White to move. How would you continue here? How would you assess the position? You’ll need to provide more than just the first move to score full marks.
Monday’s position came from a simul game between Emanuel Lasker and Benjamin Leussen, played in The Hague on 9 May 1908. Thanks to my virtual friend Neil Blackburn (simaginfan): I took this from his article here.
Black, to move, is better is this ending because of his further advanced king and White’s isolated queenside pawns. The game, as you’ll see below, fluctuated between a win and a draw.
This position is winning, but Black has only one move to score the point: 27… f6!, preventing e5, which, as Neil points out, is effectively zugzwang. You’d probably need intuition rather than calculation to find this over the board, especially if you’re playing blitz or on increment.
In today’s chess, with faster time limits, better opening preparation and greater tactical skills, more and more games are reaching endings. If you want to maximise your potential you need to excel at this aspect of the game.
One way to do this is to search databases for interesting pawn endings such as this one and play them out against your training partner, your chess teacher or your computer. Write down your moves and then switch on an engine and see how you got on.
Here’s the complete game, with Neil’s excellent annotations.
Our last week at the Adelaide saw four matches: three wins and one defeat.
We had two home matches, both in the Surrey ‘novelty’ leagues.
Our Ellery Williams team took on Wimbledon. scoring an impressive win.
Well done to everyone, and a warm welcome to Advik, successful in his first of what I’m sure will be many games for us.
Our Fred Manning Trophy faced Surbiton: the result was a mirror image of this.
Thanks to all for playing.
At the Twickenham Club, our Thames Valley D team entertained Ealing D,
A solid performance, with excellent wins from Alex and Dan.
The most important match of the week was our TVB team’s visit to Surbiton B. Although we’re almost at the end of the season, both promotion and relegation were both possible in what is a very tight division.
We were relieved to see that our opponents weren’t at full strength: we outrated them on five of the six boards. Our hopes were fulfilled like this:
Polina quickly reached a minor piece ending which was agreed drawn. Jon, playing the Dutch Defence, attacked like Tal, crushing his opponent who had left most of pieces on the wrong side of the board. I was, as always with Black, worse from the opening, but Graham didn’t press things too much and I was happy to accept his draw offer: my first draw, and my first non-loss with Black of the season. Bertie went down in a bishop ending where his weakened pawns proved fatal: a nice win by his opponent leaving the score 2-2. We were doing better in the last two games: James (welcome to the team!) won a pawn, but his opponent managed to eliminate the queenside pawns, leaving him, in the second bishop ending of the night, with BPP v BP. It should have been drawn, but, like Carlsen, he kept on probing and eventually managed to swindle his way to victory. Victor played a beautiful positional game in the style of Petrosian, using his better bishop and pawn formation to reach a winning rook ending, which soon became an even more winning pawn ending.
Thanks to all who played, and also to Adrian, who came along as a reserve.
This result, along with Wimbledon A beating Maidenhead B on Monday, clarifies the situation at the top of the league.
All we need to do now is win our last two matches to gain promotion: away to Maidenhead B on 27 April and home to Wimbledon B on 7 May.
Thanks again to all our players, and to our match captains this week.
