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Archives for April 2017

Kevin Jones wins the West Yorkshire Open

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Stage two of the UK Tour 2017 and we head up to Bradford for the inaugural West Yorkshire Open. With a guaranteed £3700 prize pot thanks to a number of generous sponsors – including £2000 for the winner – places went pretty quickly, and ultimately 77 players in the main tournament did battle over the weekend. Sadly three places were no-shows, a bit disappointing considering the effort that went into creating a great weekend.

Saturday featured a very full day of play with six 7-point rounds in Swiss format to produce a final 28 for the Sunday’s knockout. Many congratulations to Main winner Kevin Jones, shown above (seated left) in the 11-point final with Steve Bibby.

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Position of the Week: 24th April

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Over on DailyGammon, Arthur Wright organises an annual series of international team challenges – 25-point matches between six teams of thirteen, starting in early January, with the final games wrapping up usually around Easter time. I was delighted to make the cut this year for the British Bulldogs and today’s position comes from my match with Perfect-Celle (Marcel) of the German Wunderbars, this year’s overall champions. A rather undeserved win for me, but sadly a 7-6 team loss.

Usually I simply run a match though eXtremeGammon and locate all my blunders as a way of finding positions for this column – but today it’s Marcel playing Blue in a position I would probably have missed over the board if the sides were swapped. Can you do better?

 

London Open 2017 – register now

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The 2017 London Open, stage 4 of the UKBGF Tour, is now only a few weeks away. It will take place from 26th-28th May at Henrietta Barnett School in Hampstead Garden Suburb, London NW11. Entry will be strictly limited to 128 players, 64 in the Masters and 64 in the Intermediates, and the format of the main tournament will be a Saturday Swiss qualifier followed by a last 16 knock-out, guaranteeing everyone plenty of play. Places have been booking up quickly and there are less than twenty places left in each division, so if you want to take part, do sign up now, they are likely to be all gone before the day!

The venue has a large playing room which will enable everyone to be in the same space, and we have use of a café on site from which we will provide a range of food and drinks on all three days of the tournament. Tea, coffee and some cold drinks will be included in the registration fee. Our caterers will endeavour to provide for any special dietary requirements you may have, but if you want to take advantage then you will need to register before April 30th – and in any case, registering quickly means we can guarantee to cater for the right numbers.

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Position of the Week – Nordic special!

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I’ve just spent a very pleasant weekend watching the live streaming from the Nordic Open, and in particular today’s final between Henrik Bang (Denmark) and Elias Kritikos (Norway). Many congratulations to Henrik for winning the tournament – one of the toughest – and to both for playing better than PR 4 over a very long match. Sadly there wasn’t a lot of British success to shout about this time. It’s notable that the Nordic leads the way in live streams with top quality broadcasts, all streamed matches available on Youtube after the event, expert commentary right from the opening round, and interviews with the players after the match.

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Position of the Week: 9th April

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I returned from a delightfully laptop-free holiday (guaranteed to protect me from the temptation to check up on what’s going on at work!) to find – predictably – a big pile of emails. So apologies in advance that the analysis for the last couple hasn’t happened yet… I’m working on it.

However, that doesn’t stop me digging up another position from my win-less BMAB tournament in March this year. Once again I’m blue, I’m playing Lawrence Powell and with one point under my belt I haven’t yet caught sight of the PR carnage ahead of me.

The question is as always, what’s the best move in what appears to be quite an innocuous position. Although you could well ask, how could I possibly foul this one up?

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