They think it's all over ... it is now.
A big plus score, some great chess, games full of incident and if not the tournament of a life time then certainly a most excellent result with a TPR well above an already high elo rating. I refer, of course, to S&BCC's own Angus French who gave the Major Open a good tonking and finished 2nd on 8/11, just half a point behind the winner. Mickey Adams didn't do badly either and became the 2010 British Champion.
As well as his excellent finish, Angus will be bringing home quite an anecdote relating to his battles with Francis Rayner. EJH will be here tomorrow with an account of the whole shebang but suffice to say for now that the pair played two games (sort of), shared 2.5 points between them from those games (definitely) and generated pages of comment over at the EC Forum.
I hope Angus will send us some games to publish in due course. For today though we'll focus on what happened in the British Championship. Here's the top of the final table:-
So Adams, probably to the surprise of nobody, won and Nick Pert finished second. Pert was the last of all the top guys to enter the championship so it was fitting that he was the last to finish, his 11th round game going to 86 moves before he finally took the point from Stephen Gordon. The extra effort was definitely worth it; had our tardy but determined GM not won that B+N+3P v R+3P ending he'd have left Canterbury over £1000 the lighter.
Unfortunately neither of our recent interviewees had spectacularly good tournaments. Keith Arkell finished 9th-14th on 7/11 and Simon Williams 15th-21st on 6.5/11. Keith may, at least, have the satisfaction of setting a new record for the most moves played in a single Championship tournament - around 700 I believe.
The Salimbeni game is noteworthy, incidentally, not just because it was the longest of Keith's many long games but also for the fact that just two short years ago George was defending this very line against your humble scribe. Would it shock you, dear reader, to learn that I gave him considerably less trouble?
Of the remainder we should give an honourable mention to Adam Hunt who had a tougher tournament than anybody but, despite facing 7 GMs and 3 IMs, finished equal third. Hunt's 7.5/11 secured him a GM norm and about £850. Curiously, IM Andrew Greet earned the same amount of prize money even though he faced no GMs at all, just 3 IMs, 2 FMs and only three opponents rated over 2249. This sort of thing is what happens when the Championship Tournament gets bigger and bigger and in the process is allowed to get rather bottom heavy I suppose.
Enough. I want to finish with my favourite game from the Championship - Mickey Adams' smooth crushing of Stuart Conquest. I read somewhere that Mickey has now beaten The Conq twelve games running. Random unsourced internet posts are not the most pukka of references I grant you but if this is true then the 2008 British Champion obviously needs to find a new strategy the next time he gets to play the 2010 Champion. Perhaps he should try turning up after the default time then claiming he deserves a half-point anyway?
And with that our coverage of Canterbury 2010 is almost at an end. EJH will be here tomorrow and thereafter we return to our usual Monday-Wednesday-Friday-Saturday schedule ... until Sheffield 2011.
A big plus score, some great chess, games full of incident and if not the tournament of a life time then certainly a most excellent result with a TPR well above an already high elo rating. I refer, of course, to S&BCC's own Angus French who gave the Major Open a good tonking and finished 2nd on 8/11, just half a point behind the winner. Mickey Adams didn't do badly either and became the 2010 British Champion.
As well as his excellent finish, Angus will be bringing home quite an anecdote relating to his battles with Francis Rayner. EJH will be here tomorrow with an account of the whole shebang but suffice to say for now that the pair played two games (sort of), shared 2.5 points between them from those games (definitely) and generated pages of comment over at the EC Forum.
I hope Angus will send us some games to publish in due course. For today though we'll focus on what happened in the British Championship. Here's the top of the final table:-
9.5
Adams
8.0
Pert (N)
7.5
Conquest, Greet, Hawkins, Hunt, Pert (R), Slavin
So Adams, probably to the surprise of nobody, won and Nick Pert finished second. Pert was the last of all the top guys to enter the championship so it was fitting that he was the last to finish, his 11th round game going to 86 moves before he finally took the point from Stephen Gordon. The extra effort was definitely worth it; had our tardy but determined GM not won that B+N+3P v R+3P ending he'd have left Canterbury over £1000 the lighter.
Unfortunately neither of our recent interviewees had spectacularly good tournaments. Keith Arkell finished 9th-14th on 7/11 and Simon Williams 15th-21st on 6.5/11. Keith may, at least, have the satisfaction of setting a new record for the most moves played in a single Championship tournament - around 700 I believe.
The Salimbeni game is noteworthy, incidentally, not just because it was the longest of Keith's many long games but also for the fact that just two short years ago George was defending this very line against your humble scribe. Would it shock you, dear reader, to learn that I gave him considerably less trouble?
Of the remainder we should give an honourable mention to Adam Hunt who had a tougher tournament than anybody but, despite facing 7 GMs and 3 IMs, finished equal third. Hunt's 7.5/11 secured him a GM norm and about £850. Curiously, IM Andrew Greet earned the same amount of prize money even though he faced no GMs at all, just 3 IMs, 2 FMs and only three opponents rated over 2249. This sort of thing is what happens when the Championship Tournament gets bigger and bigger and in the process is allowed to get rather bottom heavy I suppose.
Enough. I want to finish with my favourite game from the Championship - Mickey Adams' smooth crushing of Stuart Conquest. I read somewhere that Mickey has now beaten The Conq twelve games running. Random unsourced internet posts are not the most pukka of references I grant you but if this is true then the 2008 British Champion obviously needs to find a new strategy the next time he gets to play the 2010 Champion. Perhaps he should try turning up after the default time then claiming he deserves a half-point anyway?
And with that our coverage of Canterbury 2010 is almost at an end. EJH will be here tomorrow and thereafter we return to our usual Monday-Wednesday-Friday-Saturday schedule ... until Sheffield 2011.
1 comment:
It would perhaps be ungentlemanly to observe that Keith missed a win on move 127, but he did.
Post a Comment