Crumbled by Bramley

I played Doug Bramley in the club championship last night, an enjoyable interesting game, but I was on the back foot for most of it.

[Event "Spondon Club Championship 2007/08"]
[Date "2008.05.13"]
[White "Dean Madden"]
[Black "Doug Bramley"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "C00"]

1. e4 e6 2. d3 d5 3. Nd2 Nf6 4. Ngf3 dxe4 5. dxe4 Bc5 6. h3 O-O 7. Bd3 h6 8. O-O Nbd7 9. Re1 e5 10. Nc4 Re8 11. Bd2 a6 12. Ne3 Ba7 13. Nf5 Nc5 14. N3h4 Bxf5 15. Nxf5 Nxd3 16. cxd3 Qxd3 17. Bxh6 Qxd1 18. Raxd1 gxh6 19. Nxh6+ Kg7 20. Nf5+ Kf8 21. g4 Red8 22. Rxd8+ Rxd8 23. Re2 Rd7 24. Kg2 Ne8 25. Kg3 Ng7 26. Nh6 Ne6 27. f3 f6 28. h4 Kg7 29. Nf5+ Kh7 30. Rg2 Rd3 31. Rh2 Be3 32. Re2 Bf4+ 33. Kg2 Nd4 34. Nxd4 Rxd4 35. Rc2 Rd2+ 36. Rxd2 Bxd2 37. Kh3 c5 38. h5 b5 39. Kg2 b4 40. b3 Kg7 41. Kf1 Kf7 42. Ke2 Bf4 43. Kd3 Ke6 44. Kc4 Kd6 45. Kd3 Kc6 46. Kc4 Bg5 47. Kd3 Kb5 48. Kc2 a5 49. Kb2 c4 50. a4+ bxa3+ 51. Kxa3 c3 0-1

It was the first time I'd played him as white, he played the French. I'd just been reading about the best way to play Kings Indian Attack against different openings a couple of days ago, but foolishly skipped the French section as hadn't played against it in ages, doh!

Above is what I was looking at on move 6, he's just played the bishop to c5. I was now worried about him playing Ng4 and taking on f2, so played the weak h3. Better would have been to move the bishop then castle. Letting him take the rook for two pieces would have been ok.

Later on I had chances to push to e5, but left it too late, this left me with a weaker position.

By move 14 above I'd decide on the plan of action to attack his kingside, no matter if it was viable or not (it wasn't). So instead of defending the e4 pawn decided on a fruitless attack.

By move 17 above, I'd realised I'd messed up so decide to take a punt (i.e. make it worse) and sacrifice the bishop to h6. A better move would have been Nxg7 as taking it would have allowed me a discovered attack on his Queen.

I played on as I had 4 pawns against 2 on the kingside but his extra bishop was too strong and I never got anywhere. I certainly learned a lot from the endgame, i.e. how to win it from his side.

I've been reading Silmans Endgame book recently and am trying to digest the Lucena and Philidor positions, so will probably have a post on them soon.

GM Nigel Davies has been blogging recently at Tigerchess, interesting stuff. However I think he's gone a bit overboard in the stuff he's been writing about regarding a post at the Streatham & Brixton blog. Amusing comments here.

There's also been a lot of aggravation going on at English Chess Federation forum, after a number of board members resigned recently.

Jamboree 2008

Last night was the Derby League end of season Jamboree. It's a four round quick play team competition. My first one was last year and I ended on zero. This time I ended up with one win and three losses so by my calculations I'll win every game in 2011.

The games were initially scheduled for 20mins each but were cut down to 15mins due to traffic problems causing delays for some players. I enjoyed the event, but am still quite poor at playing quickly. I either play too fast and blunder, or play too slow and run out of time.

First game was against Mick Orridge, he broke through my kingside very quickly and I was thinking I might lose within the first couple of minutes. But I managed to hang on and had a healthy lead in time. But then when he noticed he was behind on time he played faster and I started hesitating. He had a much stronger position, and eventually my flag fell when I'd ran out of ideas.

Game 2 was against someone who plays for Derby & Mickleover but I can't remember his name. This was one where I played too quickly and blundered early on. He played fast but very accurate.

I got my sole win against Barry Lings in round 3. We got down to an evenish endgame with him having about 8mins left and me 1min. I was able to promote a pawn and luckily stumbled into a mating position with about 10 seconds left.

Round 4 I lost to a girl! Only kidding Pete & Louise if you read this. I was a piece up early on, but shortly afterwards I gave a piece away too and we came to an evenish rook and pawns endgame. However I'd been playing much slower so didn't have much time left. I'm sure we both made loads of mistakes in the endgame, but she played better and when the dust cleared she had forced me to exchange rooks and had an unreachable passed pawn.

The Rolls Royce venue was great and I hope we play there again. Will post the full results here when the hardworking Bert sends them out.

Update:

Jamboree 2008
At Rolls Royce Chess Club (Nightingale Hall)
Thursday May 8th 2008

Open
CHESTERFIELD (A) 12½ Winner
BREADSALL (A) 10½
BELPER (A) 10
DERBY/MICK (A) 6½
ROLLS ROYCE (A) 4½
SPONDON (A) 4

Minor
SPONDON (B) 11 Winner
DERBY/MICK (B) 8
ROLLS ROYCE (B) 7
SPONDON (D) 6½
SPONDON (C) 4½

Bert Loomes, Phil Smith and myself played for Spondon D; Gary Davison, Martin Gibson, and Pete & Louise Brace played for Spondon C; Spondon B were Doug Bramley, Mick Orridge, Phil Sheldon and Graham Pace; Spondon A were Ian Gregory, Mark Carter, Howard Bradbury and Richard Hickling (from what I can remember).

The Spondon Summer Open (an 8 round swiss) starts in June, very much looking forward to it.

Last round of Derbyshire Individual

I played Barry Archer last night, and got a draw in a very enjoyable game. That leaves my final score out of the 7 rounds standing at 4 draws and 3 losses. Doesn't sound great, but seeing as I was easily the lowest ranked player in the 16 entrants, I'm more than happy with it, as I was expecting to end on zero.

[Event "Derbyshire Individual 2007/08 Round 7"]
[Date "2008.05.06"]
[Round "7"]
[White "Barry Archer"]
[Black "Dean Madden"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[ECO "B01"]

1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Qxd5 3. Nc3 Qa5 4. d4 c6 5. Nf3 Nf6 6. Be2 Bf5 7. Bd2 Qc7 8. O-O e6 9. Nh4 Bg6 10. Nxg6 hxg6 11. g3 Nbd7 12. Bf3 O-O-O 13. Re1 Qb6 14. Bc1 Nb8 15. Ne2 Bc5 16. c3 e5 17. b4 Be7 18. Qb3 e4 19. Bg2 Rhf8 20. Bg5 Rde8 21. Nf4 Bd6 22. Bxf6 gxf6 23. Rxe4 Rxe4 24. Bxe4 Bxf4 25. gxf4 Qc7 26. f5 gxf5 27. Bxf5+ Kd8 28. c4 Qf4 29. Bc2 Rg8+ 30. Kf1 Qxh2 31. Rd1 Qh1+ 32. Ke2 Re8+ 33. Kd2 Qh6+ 34. Kc3 Re2 35. c5 Rxf2 36. Qxf7 Rf3+ 37. Kb2 Kc8 38. Re1 Re3 39. Bf5+ Kd8 40. Rxe3 Qxe3 41. Qxf6+ Qe7 42. Qxe7+ Kxe7 43. Kc3 b5 44. cxb6 axb6 45. Kc4 Kd6 46. a4 Kc7 47. b5 Kd6 48. bxc6 Nxc6 49. Be4 Na5+ 50. Kb5 Kc7 51. d5 Nb3 52. d6+ 1/2-1/2

Above, 9.Nh4 was a move I hadn't seen before in the Scandinavian. After a good think I chose the correct Bg6, as I figured that him taking the bishop would allow me to take back with the h-pawn and even though I had doubled pawns the open h-file for my rook would be worth it and would allow me a chance to castle longside and launch an attack on his kingside.

I overcommitted a bit in the early middle game, thinking I had more of an attack than was really justified, and left some weaknesses for him to exploit. By move 23 he was up a pawn, but was forced to weaken his kingside pawn structure in the process.

On move 29 I had the nice position above where I was able to harass his king and get a pawn back. But I let the attack fizzle out and again he exploited weaknesses and picked up another pawn, I was lucky he overlooked some more dangerous tactical opportunities.

By move 43, we reached the endgame position above, and I was expecting to lose. I just played on because I didn't particularly know how I would exploit it so was hoping to learn from his play.

The game ended when he played 52.d6 and offered a draw. This position is indeed a draw according to Fritz, but it looks like he threw it away with 51.d5.

Howards Way

Last night I played Howard in the club championship, I'd played him a few weeks ago with the same colours in the Derbyshire Individual, so was wishing I'd studied that game beforehand. He doesn't think much of the way I play against the Sicilian, but it's all I know really and I don't think it's unsound. Where I'm going wrong is more middle game planning & tactics as far as I can see so won't worry too much about the opening for now.

[Event "Spondon Club Championship 2007/08"]
[Date "2008.04.29"]
[White "Dean Madden"]
[Black "Howard Bradbury"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "B50"]

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. g3 Nc6 4. Bg2 Bg4 5. h3 Bh5 6. g4 Bg6 7. d3 e5 8. O-O Be7 9. Nc3 Nf6 10. Bg5 Nd7 11. Bxe7 Nxe7 12. b3 f6 13. Qd2 O-O 14. Nb5 Nb6 15. a4 a6 16. Nc3 Bf7 17. Rfb1 d5 18. Rd1 Qc7 19. Rac1 dxe4 20. Nxe4 Rad8 21. Qc3 Rc8 22. Nfd2 Nbd5 23. Qb2 Nf4 24. Re1 Nxg2 25. Kxg2 Ng6 26. Kh2 Bd5 27. f3 f5 28. Ng3 fxg4 29. hxg4 Qe7 30. Rf1 Qh4+ 31. Kg2 Nf4+ 32. Kf2 Qh2+ 33. Ke3 Qxg3 34. c4 Bc6 35. Ne4 Bxe4 36. dxe4 Rcd8 37. Rcd1 Rxd1 38. Rxd1 Ng2+ 0-1

I'm quite pleased with how I played the first h of the game, I was thinking clearly and had lots of plans during the game instead of aimlessly moving about, and was recognising his threats.

By move 23 he had got a strong knight on f4 (below), I think this shows the power of controlling the centre.


This weakened my kingside greatly, and he was able to launch a big attack that picked up a knight and left me with the position below to which I resigned:

CTS current rating

I've decided on making Chess Tactics Server part of my official training, not sure on how I'll monitor it, but it's just something I enjoy doing now and then, it's very easy to just open it up and do a few problems. My current ratings etc are below. I don't think I'm really rated around 1163, but this just reflects the fact that I play quite slowly, if I can speed up a bit it will help my game I think.

Rating 1163
RD 57.4
Tries 829
Success 71.2 %
Highest rating 1181
Date of highest rating 2007-12-08 21:26:03
Latest action 2008-04-28 21:46:20

Looking back at some older posts, my rating is slowly rising, what I hope to get out of it is speed in recognising the basic motifs, whereas my circles training will focus on slightly more difficult problems.

Oct07:
Rating 1105
RD 51.1
Tries 583
Success 71.4 %
Highest rating 1146
Date of highest rating 2007-10-06 22:09:59
Latest action 2007-10-18 22:11:55

Aug07:
Rating 1100
RD 39.2
Tries 290
Success 70.7 %
Highest rating 1100
Date of highest rating 2007-08-12 12:09:55
Latest action 2007-08-12 12:09:55

Update: I've been on a bit of a roll and have got it up to 1215, hopefully this reflects the improvements I've made in my game in the last 6 months or so.

Getting back into the circles

I'm about to continue with the circles, after I put it on hold for a couple of months. I'd got through 136 problems, with about 50% accuracy. So that seems as good enough a point to start on circle 2. I realise the classic way of doing the circles was to do the whole thousand problems in one go, but it seems the alternative way of doing mini-sets works quite good as well. So will see how quickly I can go through the 136 again, and how accurately, then decide on whether to do another circle of the same problems or try another set. As I'm doing the problems from a book, I tend to just do them on lunch breaks etc, when I'm on the pc at home I prefer to use Chess Tactics Server, which I think complements the circles well. Good luck to the fellow knights who have joined during my temporary hiatus.

Catching up with the blogs

I'd taken a break from reading chess blogs for a while, but am now catching up with what I missed, thanks to Bloglines keeping a list of them. More bloggers are now posting video clips, analysing games and books etc. There are a bunch of good ones at Barnet Elizabethans Chess Club, and also BDK has posted reviews of all his books, starting here.

There's a good write-up of a players experiences playing in Moscow here, here and here.