CCC - Tournaments

South Lakes Congress 2008:

As every year, the South Lakes Congress was held in the Cumbria Grand Hotel in Grange-over-Sands during the first week-end of June. As usual, the tournament was delightful and well organised. Even the sun was out, which made it even more enjoyable.
Three members of Cockermouth Chess Club club attended it: John Jarmany played in the Open section, Philippe Gleizon played in the Major section and Neil Jones played in the Intermediate Section.

Neil Jones finished with 2.5 points. A decent result, which left Neil a little bit disappointed by his average performance.

John Jarmany had few good games but found himself under time trouble in a couple of games. He eventually finished with 1.5 points and felt unsatisfied with his performance. To be mentionned: the experience of playing the blind but strong player Graham Lilley. However, his efforts were well rewarded by a Cumbrian grading prize. There was little challenge for this prize as the other Cumbrian player who was in this section (Colin Costello) withdrew after the second round. But still a well deserved prize for John.

As for Philippe Gleizon, a tragedy struck him...
Philippe played significantly higher graded players all rounds, and actually achieved an excellent performance.
    In his first game, Philippe lost a bishop for a pawn against a very solid Phillip Mitcheson (153). But this did not discourage Philippe who managed to exchange all the other pieces, leaving his opponent with a knight against his side pawn. After the exchange of these last two pieces, the game was drawn.
    The second game against Carl Heald (142) went better. After a tedious middlegame, Carl lost a key pawn and his game soon fell apart when Philippe exploited a couple of pins. Carl only resigned after 76 moves though!
    Third round was played against Sean Hewitt (151). This time, Philippe was all attack. After a knight pseudo-sacrifice, Philippe opened Sean's castling and started to threaten his king. Sean reacted by a counter-attack but Philippe used a second knight pseudo sacrifice to stop it, as it was threatening checkmate. Sean managed to avoid being checkmated but only at the cost of losing all his six pawns in succession! After what he resigned.
    Came a decisive fourth round on Sunday morning, against Ian Campbell (156). During the middlegame, Philippe got a strong extra passed pawn, which became his best asset as all material was progressively traded away. Ian best resort was to keep Philippe in check with his queen to get a pawn back or play for the perpetual check. Unfortunately, he overlooked that one of his check could be covered by Philippe's queen which checked his king in return, forcing the queen exchange. Ian realised then that all hopes were gone and he resigned.
    With 3.5 points after 4 rounds, Philippe was now looking for a second or equal first prize, as one player in the section was with 4/4. The last round was crucial and the tension was high... Philippe played Eoin Campbell (156). How funny was it that for the last two rounds, his two opponents had same name, same grade, almost same forename, and that the games were played on the same board with the same colour!
After a difficult king's indian opening, Philippe emerged better in the middlegame. He was actually winning a couple of pawn and pushing his opponent king against the back rank. All was then looking very good and the excitement was at its climax... when the drama occurred...
Philippe decided to exchange knights to undouble his pawns. This was a bad decision as it allowed Eoin to push further his pawn to trap Philippe's king on the back rank. Philippe freed his king by pushing his h-pawn by only one square. Fatal blunder! Two squares would have lost the pawn but saved the king. Now the pawn was obstructing the only escape square for the king, which was checkmated in two moves by rook and bishop!
Devastated, Philippe realised he was so close to get a second prize for one of his best tournament so far, and he had to sastisfy himself with the grading prize...