Thursday 16 March 2017

D. Zelenchuks "Russian" To Victory As Heroes Hit A "St. Petersburg"!

Martin Kelly reports:

Ballynafeigh 3     3.5-1.5   Kelly's Heroes
1.Ross Harris 0.5-0.5 David Ruben
2.Edward Doak 0.5-0.5 John McKenna
3.Daniil Zelenchuk 1-0 Bernard Jaffa
4.Dmitri Zelenchuk 1-0 Craig Stevenson
5.Colin Fenton 0.5-0.5 Martin Kelly
Win Bonus 2.0-0.0
Champions-elect Ballynafeigh 3 defeated third-placed Kelly's Heroes, thanks largely to Zelenchuk père et fils. After this game, I think I shall "Zelenchuk" my chess set away! In the quickest game, Fenton was "bent on" destroying Kelly's favourite Vienna Gambit but a 7 move draw ensued, preserving Kelly's unbeaten league record! In a "Daniil and Goliath" clash next, "stone me"! little Daniil won again ! I wouldn't "poke" a "joke" at Doak facing unbeaten John McKenna but he didn't "choke" and in the end a draw was "ok"! What's "d' matter" with Dmitry I thought as Craig fought valiantly but lost! Finally, as I had left to watch United lose in the FA Cup, it was nice to see "Harris tweed" his draw and our overall defeat to my phone! Here's the Fenton vs Kelly game: Games
[Event "UCU League Div 2"] [Site "?"] [Date "2017.03.13"] [Round "?"] [White "Kelly, Martin"] [Black "Fenton, Colin"] [Result "1/2-1/2"] [ECO "C29"] [Annotator "Kelly"] [PlyCount "14"] [EventDate "2016.10.??"] [EventType "team"] [Source "ChessBase"] [SourceDate "1997.11.17"] 1. e4 e5 2. Nc3 Nf6 3. f4 d5 4. fxe5 Nxe4 5. d3 Bb4 $5 ({or} 5... Qh4+) ({or} 5... Nxc3) 6. dxe4 Qh4+ 7. Ke2 Qg4+ ({Draw. I had expected} 7... Bg4+ 8. Nf3 Bxc3 9. bxc3 dxe4 10. Qd4 $1) 1/2-1/2

Monday 6 March 2017

Belfast Bullet & Blitz photos and final standings

See also:
Belfast Blitz and Bullet Championships (NI Chess News)
The Zeitgeist of Time (Ulster Chess Chronicle)

Round 1 in the Blitz - Mark Newman (White) against Sergio Esteve Sanchez.
Beyond them are Danny Roberts and Daniil Zelenchuk (partially obscured).
Mikhail Pavlov (in the foreground) and Edward Doak
are watching on. 
24 players were listed to play at the start of the Open Blitz Championship. Running alongside the main event in the morning was a special event for unrated UCU youth players, which was particularly appropriate because the Championships are part of a series of fundraising events to provide bursaries for young NI players to compete at the upcoming Saint Petersburg -v- Belfast match. This match will be held at the Youth Sport Schools of Kalininsky, Saint Petersburg, Russia from 18th to 25th August this year.
Trophies, medals and certificates for the Open Blitz and Children's Blitz
The Children's Blitz was a double-round all play all with Ciaran Rowan finishing first of the 5 players with 9 points out of a possible 10 and thereby winning the first prize Trophy. Second and silver medalist was Adam Fitzsimons with 8 points. Third place and a bronze medal went to Dexter Harris on 6. Joel McLean came fourth on 5 and James Fitzsimons, playing in his first ever tournament, scored 2 points.

While the Children had completed their competition by lunchtime, the Open Blitz had only reached its half-way point. Here are the standings after the 8 morning rounds.
Blitz standings at the half-way point
By way of explanation, Ciaran Rowan and Adam Fitzsimons appear in the standings because they would be joining the Open competition in the afternoon now that they had finished playing in the Children's event.

Also at this half-way point James Barbour and Ronan Fitzsimons withdrew from the Open Blitz while Richard Gould played three games at the end of the competition to avoid there being a bye.

After the dust had settled three players were tied in first place with 13.5 points - Danny Roberts (a very recent addition to the Ulster chess scene after making his debut for NICS in a league match earlier in the week), Sergio Esteve Sanchez and Modestas Razbadauskas.
Blitz final standings
As you can see from the final standings table above, the first tie-breaking decider was Median Buchholz and this placed Roberts first and winner of the 2017 Belfast Blitz Championship Trophy.
Danny Roberts (left) receives the winner's
trophy for the Belfast Blitz Championship
from organiser Brendan Jamison
After a half-hour break, the Bullet championship, to be played over 8 rounds, got underway. With he time limit being one minute for all moves for each player, the room was a blur of activity. When everything eventually calmed down, Daniil Zelenchuk was top of the final standings and winner of the 2017 Belfast Bullet Championship. Mikhail Pavlov just secured second place ahead of Modestas Razbadauskas with them only being separated by the third-applying tie-break method.
Bullet final standings
Again by way of explanation of the table above, Tyrone Winter withdrew after 4 rounds and David McAlister stepped in to play rounds 5 to 8 to prevent a bye.

In conclusion, the Good Shepherd Conference Centre, which made is debut as a chess venue at last month's Pavlov-Jamison Monster Simul (another of the St Petersburg Match fundraisers) is an excellent room for a chess tournament. There was more than ample room around the playing tables and with the high ceiling and sensible amount of heating players were neither too warm nor too cold. Unlike some other local chess venues, there was no bar or restaurant within the venue, but organiser Brendan Jamison had that one covered with a free selection of refreshments.
Sustenance
Click on the photographs and tables to enlarge them

Sunday 5 March 2017

The Zeitgeist of Time

Competitive quickplay chess in Northern Ireland goes back to at least 1950, though until the late 1970s it was an occasional divertissement rather than a regular part of chess life. Those events were what today we would group under the title "Blitz".

Then three annual open quickplay tournaments - all organised by clubs rather than the Ulster Chess Union - started in three successive years: Newtownards in 1979, Bangor in 1980 and Newcastle in 1981. While the other two events had relatively short shelf-lives, the Bangor one-day Congress continued on until the early yeas of the new millennium.

I used the more generic "quickplay" to describe these one-day tournaments but these events were at a slower rate than their blitz precursors, typically played with half-an-hour on the clock for each player. Today we would call these "Rapidplays".

By the late 1980s the UCU had caught on to this trend and started to organise regular rapidplay events throughout the year. During those years they were often described as "Active" tournaments.

In the 1989-1990 UCU Yearbook, its Honorary Secretary Alex Beckett had this to say in an article entitled "The Year of the Active":
Chess is thought to be a sedentary game although one would not think so with the number of competitors walking about the tournament room. Some would allege this is partly for psychological reasons. I feel this is uncharitable as the walkers just like to get away from the board and to watch the other boards while keeping their own games under remote scrutiny in case their opponent punches the clock. 'Punching' the clock is an illuminating phrase, the opponent generally replies by counter-punching just to show he is not being intimidated. It is the poor clock which is suffering and it is rumoured that clock abuse is going to be investigated. Guess who is going to be chairman?

What has this got to do with Active Chess Tournaments? When you see Active Tournaments have been renamed Rapid Play Tournaments which is a pity for Active had a much healthier ring to it and got away from the sedentary image of chess and that's where we came in.
Nowadays, players more used to shorter time limits don't tend to do too much "walking about" in an Active/Rapid. Time is at a premium. Of course, in Blitz there is definitely no time to waste getting up from your board. However punching the clock is still with us.

By the beginning of the 21st century the number of rapidplays had begun to decline but competitive blitz, now including events played with a time handicap based on rating differential, was making a comeback. In 2011 the UCU started an annual Ulster Blitz Championship in the Christmas holiday slot previously reserved for the Ulster Rapidplay Championship and before that the Ulster Championship itself. At Christmas the pace of chess life was definitely quickening.

In the present day, Northern Ireland players have access to a range of competitive chess tournaments at varying time limits. Into this scene entered a new twist to the quickplay model - the 2017 Belfast Blitz and Bullet Championships, played on Saturday 4th March. Played over a mammoth 16 rounds with a time limit of 3 minutes plus 2 seconds increment per player, the main event was the Open Blitz Championship . However when the Blitz had completed its course and after about 30 minutes of respite, the Bullet Championship began at 4.00 pm.
The first round of the first-ever Bullet Tournament in NI getting underway
So what exactly is bullet chess? Perhaps the most famous exponent of this form of the game is American GM Hikaru Nakamura and in his book "Bullet Chess: One Minute to Mate" (Russell Enterprises, 2009) he used the term "bullet" interchangeably with "one-minute chess". However Nakamura points out that anything less than 3 minutes per player is regarded as bullet. In the Belfast Bullet Championship play was the "pure" form of the game - just 60 seconds to play all your moves.

In Chapter 1 of his book, Nakamura sets out a brief Q&A about bullet, including this exchange:
Isn't one-minute fast?
Yes, it is.
Is bullet still chess?
Of course not!
This is the fundamental truth about bullet chess that many players fail to understand. Bullet is certainly a form of chess and much of what you have learned about chess applies to bullet, but bullet should never be confused with conventional chess itself!
When non-bullet players scoff "it's not chess!" the correct response from a bullet player is "who said it was?"
Then why play bullet?
Because it's fun.
Belfast Bullet Championship trophy, medals and certificates

Some of the players in the Blitz decided not to enter the Bullet. Perhaps some had trains to catch but others may have thought that this one-minute chess would be just a bit too frantic for them. After eight rounds of bullet I think that the vast majority of the Belfast Bullet Championship players would have agreed with Nakamura. To paraphrase Mr Spock in Star Trek "It's chess, but not as we know it."

Daniil Zelenchuk, Belfast Bullet Championship
winner with organiser Brendan Jamison

Saturday 4 March 2017

Belfast Blitz and Bullet Championships

This new event, organised by Brendan Jamison under the Chess NI banner, was held at the Good Shepherd Centre, Belfast on Saturday 4th March 2017. A total of 31 players competed in three separate competitions:
  • An Open Blitz Championship, over 16 rounds with a time limit of 3 minutes plus 2 seconds increment for each player. There were 8 rounds in a morning session and a further eight in the afternoon.
  • A Children's Blitz, over 10 rounds with a time limit of 10 minutes each, held in the morning.
  • A Bullet Championship, held after the conclusion of the Blitz, over 8 rounds. Time limit in Bullet is 1 minute for each player.
I hope to post a considered review soon, but to start with here's the rundown on the prizewinners:
PRIZEWINNERS

BELFAST BLITZ CHAMPIONSHIPS
1 Danny Roberts (1975)
2 Sergio Esteve Sanchez (1994)
3 Modestas Razbadauskas (1678)

Junior rating band prizelist
1 Gary Johnston (1002)
2 Dmitry Zelenchuk (1178)
3 Chris Armstrong (1326)


CHILDREN'S BLITZ
1 Ciaran Rowan (1038)
2 Adam Fitzsimons (702)
Blitz prizewinners (l to r) Dimitry Zelenchuk, Modestas Rabzadauskas,Adam
Fitzsimons, Danny Roberts, Gary Johnston. Chris Armstrong and  Ciaran Rowan
BELFAST BULLET CHAMPIONSHIP

1 Daniil Zelenchuk (1426)
2 Mikhail Pavlov (1513)
3 Modestas Razbadauskas (1678)

Junior rating band prizelist
1 Dmitry Zelenchuk (1178)
2 Edward Doak (1313)
3 Gary Johnston (1002)

Children's prizelist
1 Ciaran Rowan (1038)
2 Adam Fitzsimons (702)

Bullet prizewinners (l to r) Gary Johnston, Modestas Razbadauskas, Edward Doak,
Daniil Zelenchuk, Mikhail Pavlov, Adam Fitzsimons, Dimitry Zelenchuk and Ciaran Rowan