Yorkshire U1850 chess: the final!

The final for the U1850 competition was against Middlesex, and arranged to be at Syston co-located with the Open match. With proper arbiters and everything. Very official. Syston is a nondescript place just outside Leicester - apologies to residents of Syston - but not too far from anyone. Despite being north of Peterborough it is significantly worse for train connections so I and a few others decided to drive down the night before where we met for a curry in Leicester. I also did the Abbey Park parkrun on Saturday morning (and my fastest 5k for over a year) before rolling up the road to Syston for the match.

Due to the September rating list eligibility criterion, there was a smattering of strong juniors significantly over 1850 rating throughout both teams and I was happy to avoid their 1920-rated board 10 who had gained 100 points in the past month alone! Time control was 135+15s, which is a bit longer than I usually play but not hugely so. I didn't play the opening particularly well with black, got myself under pressure and had to work hard to stay in the game. Meanwhile there were a number of quick draws around me, then a win and a loss. The match was looking pretty level for a long time but then we were a point down and that's how it stayed as my game progressed. I was hanging on in the endgame (quite comfortably in the end) when it was confirmed that we were 8-7 down with just our game to finish, and once my opponent had accepted he had no realistic chance of a win, he offered a draw and that was the end of it.

Here's the game in all its glory. Not the best I've ever played, but not the worst either.

A shame about the match result - and I'm a bit disappointed with how badly I played the opening - but overall a great match with lots of close games. My overall score for the season is 2.5/4 (+2 =1 -1) and I can't complain about (narrowly) achieving a plus score (and probably earning about 10 rating points) against such closely matched opponents. I look forward to next year's campaign.

And here's a bonus game, an earlier round against Merseyside played a few months ago. At the time I'd been so disappointed by the opening miss in this game that I hadn't had the heart to go through a full analysis. But I've done that now. I was still up on board 1 for this match, and my friend and clubmate Charlie who was also playing had driven us down to Liverpool in the morning. I thought (correctly) my opponent had made an early error in the opening, but didn't spot the correct continuation and soon had no advantage whatsoever. I pressed on until I found myself on the losing side, but the team had won handily by that point anyway.

So that's it for the season. Next year's competition maybe starts in Oct/Nov, fixtures TBA. I look forward to it.