Club Champion's Simultaneous Display 11th October 2016
Jeremie Poschmann
1/2 vs Brian Aldwin
1-0 vs Will Marjoram
1-0 vs Ian Simpson
1-0 vs Barry Page-Thomas
0-1 vs Sean Pope
1/2 vs Richard Scholes
1-0 vs Richard Player
0-1 vs Alan Dean
+/- vs Leif Hafstad
0-1 vs Paul O'Neill
0-1 vs Tim Paulden
0-1 vs Alan Smith
0-1 vs Giles Body
"What's this piece called?"
"A Bishop. What is it in Spanish, Sophie?"
"Alfil"
"And in French, Agathe?"
"Fou"
Therein lies a story...
The old Arab form of chess had a piece called the elephant, which, unlike most elephants I know, could jump two squares at a time, diagonally. And 'al-fil' means the Elephant in Arabic (Pil in Persian).
But if you have a lump of stone, or wood, and you want to show that it is an elephant, you might carve two curving lines on it for tusks, or make two points on it to show the same.
The event will be staged at King’s School in Gloucester over the Whitsun Bank Holiday weekend – May 28th – 30th. Our website is at http://cotswoldcongress.co.uk/
1 Tim PAULDEN (185) (B) 0-1 John FRASER (176) (W)
2 Giles BODY (163) (W) ½-½ Paul BROOKS (158) (B)
3 Andy FRANGLETON (147) ½-½ Andrew KINDER (151)
4 Sean POPE (142) 0-1 Vignesh RAMESH (141)
5 Reece WHITTINGTON (131) 0-1 Wilf TAYLOR (131)
6 William MARJORAM (115) 1-0 Jacquie BARBER-LAFON (122)
7 Richard PLAYER (115) ½-½ Joshua BLACKMORE (100)
8 Richard SCHOLES (111) 1-0 Michael HUSSEY (99)
TOTAL Exeter 3½-4½ Newton Abbot
Exeter visited Newton Abbot on Saturday and came away with some pride
but with second place.
My young colleague Leif enjoys endgames, and has an endless curiosity about unbalanced endgames. So he asks:
can you win with three pawns against a Bishop?
how about a Knight?
what about two Knights?
A pattern we kept running into was:
united pawns on their start squares don't win against a piece (a)
united and *advanced* pawns win against a piece (b)
but
there are some special cases where the side with the piece can set up a blockade or fortressagainst advanced pawns (c)
190 Lorenz Hartmann (W) 0-1 Jack Rudd 216
185 Tim Paulden (B) ½-½ Mike Richardt 187
180 David Regis 1-0 Kevin Hurst 183
179 Christopher Lowe ½-½ Brian Hewson 176
155 Matthew Best 0-1 Simon Bartlett 167
131 Piet Dobber 0-1 Ivor Annetts 153
Negotiations about the date seemed endless, but it was all decided
quickly on the day we visited Tiverton in our first Bremridge League
fixture.
Many congratulations to Kevin Hurst (pic attached) who triumphed in our inaugural ECC Bubble Blitz tournament last night, scoring an unbeaten 8/9 with a characteristically fizzy display of attacking chess. It was a performance worthy of a Formula 1 style bottle-spraying, but Kevin wisely decided to keep the bubbly on ice until the club's Premiership-winning party next summer.
Last week the juniors saw the game of Shogi played. It's the sort of chess
played in Japan, and by our new friends Kaz and Hatzune. How is Shogi
related to the sort of chess that we normally play?
When I first looked at the history of Western Chess, I thought that the
original game was Chaturanga, a game played in India before 600AD.
Chess as played in other countries seems to come from the Arab form of
Chess called Shatranj. And that is what I used to tell people.