Well, a loss for the juniors, but by the narrowest of margins, and
against a team who were a bit stronger than they looked on paper. A
couple of the Gambits players have had much higher grades in the past,
and in the end I think experience told.
In making notes on games, I've probably explained lots of chess mistakes, and why they were mistakes. I might say, this Black move is a mistake, because White now plays A, and this works because if B then C and if D then E. (Or, White should have played A, etc.)
But there is another side to each mistake, which I can't tell anything about, but which perhaps you can, and you should try. A mistake in a chess move is also a mistake in thinking.
A tale of three discoveries: a discovered attack proved the winning move in all three games.
Unmasked threats - discovered attacks and discovered checks - are the
most difficult threats to spot. You pay attention to the piece that
moves, but the threat comes from the piece behind.
I've attached a discovered attack training page - get your eye in! In 2010, the Devon U14 team lost an awful lot of points (or a lot of awful points) to discovered attacks, and the puzzles are all things that they missed.
A squad that fought its way out of Exeter's heavy traffic to visit Newton
Abbot emerged victorious to retain the Peter Rooke Cup.
Despite some late substitutions, the teams were roughly balanced with
Teignmouth looking stronger on the higher boards, so Exeter were looking
for points in the bottom half. In the event, the closing stages saw
Newton Abbot's lead on the lower boards overtaken by a couple of
last-minute wins for Exeter higher up the order.
Our first win! Even without the point from 'super-sub' Ray Shepherd, we had a draw in the bank, and that would have been a good result too.
So, well done all round. In both other games there was a big chance for our side early on - so make sure you think right from the start, don't 'warm up' during the game!
{A terrific scrap where both sides took and missed their chances. In the end
the struggle with the 32 pieces on the board was decided as much by the clock
as by the moves.}
"After black's reply to 1.e4 with 1..e5 leaves him always trying to get into the game"
...which of course was superceded by the more famous:"After 1.e2-e4 White's game is in its last throes!"