Blitz 'n' Pieces

Hello and welcome to the second issue this year of Blitz 'n' Pieces. This time we feature reports on the Chess Club pub crawl, as well news about the league teams and the chess world in general. So ...

The annual Grangemouth Team Lightning Tournament is being held this Sunday. The traditional format is for teams of four to compete in a qualifying round. Their performance in this round determines the section they will play in for the second part of the tournament. There are prizes for the best teams in each section at the end. Some of Scotland's best players usually take part: Douglas Bryson, Colin McNab, Jonathan Grant, etc have all played in the past. The committee should have details of travel arrangements, etc.

After a good start this season, our teams have continued the good work and are still doing well. As we have said before, if you would like to play for either team, contact the team captains concerned and hassle them!

The First Team: The first team played Pentland Hills and scored 2½-2½ with one adjourned. The adjourned game is in our favour: Dave Yarwood is a pawn up with "hacking chances", but no clear win. The team then travelled away to Musselburgh last Tuesday and apparently had severe difficulty finding the venue. Once the elusive Musselburgh team was tracked down (with the help of the local constabulary!) the team again did well. The current match score is 1-1, with four adjournments. Of these four, one game is resignable but the other three are hopefully winning. So the first team could well have the excellent track record of Played 3, Won 3. [Steve Rix]

There is one remaining match this term: Away to Edinburgh 2 on Thursday 17th December.

The first team captain is Peter Goldsack, the joint President, tel: 667 1224.

The Second Team: The second team did not have such good fortune away at Musselburgh. The top board, C. Peddi won his game with an amazing queen sacrifice (would the player concerned like his game published in B'n'P? -Ed.), but the rest of the team were unable to emulate his performance, eventually going down 2-4. The team showed much better form at home to Edinburgh West 3 with the score currently 3-2, with Peter Goldsack adjourning. His game looks almost certainly to be a win, so that the second team will have played four matches and won three [Patrick Moss].

The second team also has one more match this term: Away to Bankton on Tuesday 15th December.

The Second Team Captain is Deniz Ogretir, tel: 229 6068.

No Chess Club would be complete without its pubcrawl and this year is no exception. Here is a first hand report of the club's night of shame in all its gory technicolour detail:

"It all began innocently enough in the Malt Shovel. I arrived about 15 minutes late to discover that I was already 3 pints behind such notaries as Alastair Kerr and Steve "I am not the man I was" Townsend. It was already clear that Alastair was repeating his form of last year and making a bid for The Stomach Pump award. We were also graced with the presence of another ex-Chess Club man, Neil Harkess, with his new lean look. Nyall Lynus was also present and incoherent, having clearly disobeyed Chess Club rules by turning up having already achieved a GM norm."

"We soon moved onwards and downwards, making for that perennial pub crawl favourite, The Ensign Ewart. Chess Sets made an appearance at this stage, with Steve Rix disgracing himself, by losing to Neil several times. I did attempt to play Nyall, but the GM norm was telling and he was barely distinguishing his pieces from his pint. Steven Townsend decided it was time to lead a tutorial on Nihilist and Existential philosophy in one corner, with Patrick barely preventing a brawl from breaking out. Our joint president was slurring his speech by now, well on the way to 11½ pints and oblivion."

"It was time to make our way to the Holy Grail of EUCC pub crawls and visit The Castle Arms. After the disgrace of last year, the club happily got in and was served. Though by this time, most people were well past conversation and opted for accompanying the folk singer in very loud and very out of tune voices. We had by now lost Nyall who was headed for a chip shop and the gutter (not neccessarily in that order). Neil was still alive and kicking, challenging all comers to give him a good thrashing. Alastair decided that I was obviously doing far too well against Neil and sent pints and chess sets flying as he headed for the toilet."

"We lost Steve on the way to the White Hart, he having sensibly had enough for one night. My time in the White Hart was relatively short, as by this time Alastair was doing a very convincing impression of the man with no brain. He was promptly taken home on the night bus, though whether he actually remembers this or not, I have no idea."

"This year's pub crawl was a well populated event, although we were missing such darlings of the pub crawl as Oliver Cameron, Peter "I had the flu, honest" Goldsack and Majed. On the positive side, well done to Sharon, Steve and Anthony for their first pub crawl norms."

Apologies to those not credited with their full allotment of falling-down water. Surnames have been dropped to protect the innocent(should it be guilty?):

Woman's IM Norm: Sharon, Michael, Neil Harkess & John.

IM Norm: Anthony, Steve, Patrick (who made 10 pints but ran out of drinking time).

GM Norm: Alastair & Steven Townsend.

The "Oliver Reed" Award for turning up completely legless: Nyall Lynus.

The "Sponsored by Alka-Seltser" Award: Alastair Kerr.

The "Vinny Jones" Award for social etiquette: Neil Harkess.

The "Mother Teresa" Award for outstanding altruism: John Thompson.

The "Mister Memory" Award: Anthony Bailey.

The Total Quantity of Alcohol consumed: far too much! (nearly 100 pints ... ie a nice little earner for Tennents, Newcastle, Bells, etc!)

Nigel Short begins his match against Jan Timman in the Candidate's final on January 7th. Our Nige is widely tipped to beat the dutchman, who is some ten years his senior, despite the recent news from America, where a group of envious hackers have fed "Nigel Short" into an anagram program. The most spectacular results were "Honest girl", "String hole", "Oh sterling", "Night loser", "Light snore" and "English rot".

Timman lost 2-0 rather embarrassingly to Judit Polgar in the recent speedplay Immopar tournament in Paris. The victor of this tournament, Gary Kasparov, recently beat Nigel Short when they met in the European Team Championships in Hungary.

Kasparov, asked who he would face for the World Championship and how the match would go, replied "It will be Short and it will be short!". Short has previously had a very poor record against Kasparov, but Kasparov has not performed that well against Karpov in the previous two World Championship matches. With the advantage of a lot of preparation time, Short may well acquit himself well against Kasparov.

After his comeback victory against Boris Spassky, Bobby Fischer is in the process of arranging his next match. Judit Polgar is the most widely tipped opponent, although her rating, 2565, is not much lower than Bobby's estimated rating of 2620. It remains to be seen if the match will actually be played, but Bobby (49) may be on a hiding to nothing against the youthful Polgar.

David Bronstein recently played against the new chess computer Deep Thought II. Ignoring the advice of computer chess experts, such as David Levy, Bronstein went all out to defeat the computer with wild tactics. Not suprisingly, he lost 10-2 to the number cruncher!

We have had a poor response to our appeal for blunders from games: Majed, where was yours? Anyway, to whet your appetite, we present a blunder from no less than former world champion Anatoly Karpov. Playing as black in the Interpolis knock-out speed tournament at Tilburg, he reached the following position against Alexander Chernin:

1. e7 Rxb7 2. e8=Q Kd6+

Karpov now left his king en prise, playing:

3. Qe6+?!?

Chernin failed to enter into the spirit of it and played a classic EUCC move:

3... Rxf7!!!

Karpov was obsessed with mating Chernin, having only 10 seconds on the clock and missing the obvious discovered check. The arbiter ruled that Chernin's move was illegal, and that Karpov, having touched the queen, was forced to interpose it. After the legal but mundane 3. Qe7+! Rxe7+ 4. Kf6 Re6+ 5. Kf7 Re5, Karpov resigned. He complained the next day, but to no avail.

So all you patzers out there, pass on the blunders!