I’ve been making some changes to the technical capabilities of the menu system of the club’s main website to allow us to include more history, biographies, and articles. The first visible change is the addition of an Articles section under the History menu which has as its first entry an article I’ve been working on about the remarkable flowering of talent which occurred in junior chess in Edinburgh during the 1960s and 70s. This is entitled A Golden Age for Edinburgh Juniors – the 1960s and 70s.

I hope you enjoy it and if anyone has anything further that they can contribute to it then I’d be delighted to hear from you.

Equally if anyone would like to write anything about the club’s history or personalities then do contact me – bill@billmarshall.co.uk

On Saturday evening the club played a return match against the Mechanics Institute of San Francisco played over 10 boards on chess.com (2 games on each board: 15 minutes for the game with 2 second move increments) .

The game was broadcast (and recorded) on Twitch with commentary by a great line up made of GM Nick de Firmian, FM Paul Whitehead, WCM Allyson Wong along with MI’s Chess Director Abel Talamantez and MI’s General Manager Dr Judit Sztaray.

We lost 14-6 in the end against a strong side, but managed some good performances. The top two boards ended equal with FM Neil drawing both his games on top board against IM Josiah Stearman whilst Adam deserves special mention for winning one game against GM Patrick Wolff. Berislav managed half a point versus IM Elliott Winslow. Ian held US National Master Mike Walder to a draw in their first game but whilst fighting hard in their second game got into time trouble and lost defending an opposite bishops endgame.

Some games from the match, annotated by GM Nick de Firmian, are in MI’s recent newsletter.

Message from Abel and the Mechanics’ Chess Team:

Hi Neil,

We wanted to give thanks to you and your team for helping organize the club match. It is great to have this kind of positive interaction between our clubs and communities, and we look forward to continuing to engage and collaborate in the future.

Edinburgh’s Team:

Neil Berry (thebalernobull)
Adam Bremner (AllStarShark)
Berislav Marusic (Sunshine1978)
Henk Bulthuis (henkbu)
Ian Whittaker (scotsgeek)
AJ Rushing (anacampserote)
Calum McGillivray (Penguin89C)
Ross Blackford (Ragnar006)
Robert Kane (fiercebadger)
Ian Johnston (SplashLeChat)

Full results can be found here on Chess.com.

It was reported in yesterdays Times that Edinburgh Chess Academy, created by club member Andrew Green to provide a modern and exciting way of teaching chess to children, that their Scottish Junior Tournament has been endowed with £10,000 by Gareth Williams, founder of Skyscanner!

As stated on the academy’s web site the tournament was started with the aim of getting more children to play chess in Scotland.  For this reason the competition is completely free to play in, has the largest prize fund in the UK for an online junior competition and there are prizes for children of all levels.

Fantastic news!

For the second time in three years, we sent a team to play in the European Club Cup. This years’ event was held in the splendid Rodos Palace Hotel in Rhodes, from October 19-27. We qualified as Richardson winners, and were joined by runners up Edinburgh West. We had an average rating of 2136, making us 43rd seeds out of the 53 Teams in the Open section. Here are my highlights:

Winning! We won 3 matches 3.5-2.5, which meant we finished in 33rd place. This was double our points total from last time (although we had a kinder draw this time around). Edinburgh West player John Watkins remarked that winning a game in the ECC was similar to winning a game in the Edinburgh Premier League. He meant it as a compliment…I guess we don’t have to face the mighty Edinburgh 1 so don’t have the same perspective!

Rubbing shoulders with the stars. It was nice having all the games in the one hall, and almost all of the Teams staying in the same Hotel. During meal times you would always see a number of galacticos. This extended to the local bars, where various groups of chess players gathered to watch the Champions League football matches or just unwind. Ukrainian GM Anton Korobov had the unfortunate experience of witnessing one of our worst pieces of analysis.

The Morra Gambit! Well, not really, but it provided us with our first individual win, the following fine attacking effort from David Oswald:

19.g5! hxg5? [Too compliant.]

[19…Nd4 was better. The position is messy – White has a strong attack but Black has counterplay.]

20.hxg5 Bxg5 21.Rh1 [White’s attack flows naturally.]

21…Bxe3 22.Qxe3 Nd4! [The best try. Black combines an attack on the ?c4 with defensive resources such as …Nxf5–h6 or …Qg5+–h6 in some variations.]

23.Bd3! [The most impressive move of the game. White takes a time out to move his attacked Bishop, while preventing …Nxf5 and creating a new threat of f6. A very hard move to find when ‘mid combination’.]

[Neither 23.Qh3 Qg5+; nor 23.Ne4 Nxf5 work for White.]

23…e4 24.Bxe4 d5 25.Rh5 [25.Rxh7+ mates immediately, but the move played is plenty good enough to win.]

25…dxe4 26.Rch1 Kg8 27.Rxh7 f6 28.Rh8+ Kf7 29.Rxf8+ winning either the Queen or the Knight on d4. Black resigned. 1–0

Match Results:

Rd1: Reichenstein SSB (SUI) 4.5-1.5 Edinburgh
Rd2: Edinburgh 3.5-2.5 SV Voerendaal / KNSB (NED)
Rd3: Edinburgh 1.5-4.5 SK 47 Eynatten (BEL)
Rd4: Eppingen (GER) 2.5-3.5 Edinburgh
Rd5: White Rose (ENG) 3.5-2.5 Edinburgh
Rd6: Edinburgh 3.5-2.5 Adare (IRL)
Rd7: ASI Bologna (ITA) 4-2 Edinburgh

Individual scores:

1. Clement Sreeves 2.5/7
2. Calum MacQueen 3.5/7
3. Neil Berry 3.5/7
4. David Oswald 4/7
5. Alastair White 1/7
6. Chris Sykes 3.5/7