My Chess Career

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I always dream of playing smooth positional games where I beat strong players to the cheers of the adoring crowds, but even my best efforts seem to have huge holes in them, and the rest seem to be dominated by cheapos, blunders and swindles. But who can claim more? I hope you are entertained at least by these humble efforts.

I do like my opponents to resign when I'm winning, but I can't blame them for not doing so when you see how often I get swindled by others. When Nabokov refers to the "abysmal depths of chess", you may assume he had games like these in mind.

In recent years, despite the embarrassing evidence below, I have taken on coaching of adults and juniors, using canonical examples. One of the things that makes me do this is the number of games that I win because I remember something I've seen in a GM game - for example, in my one and only correspondence game. At times like this, a club player can (in some sense) play like a master. The other thing is, coaching is a way of paying tribute to people like Tom Briggs, who were kind to me when I was starting out.

My Chess Career:

I've noted my clubs, tournament results, end-season grades and opening repertoire of the time.
1974-75
March Town Chess Club. Few recorded games. Won the Fenland Guards Junior Championship. 5.12.75: first match game for March, which I won - a blunder AND a swindle (an ominous event!).
1975-76
Fenland Individual Tournament: 3/6 (UNG).
Repertoire I: White: Giuoco Piano; Black vs. 1. e4: French; Black vs. 1.d4: QGD.
1976-77
Read Logical Chess, discovered Audio Chess cassettes (openings marked * below).
Repertoire II: W: QGD/Trompovsky *; B/e4: French; B/d4: QGD (still playing GP occasionally).
1977-78
First county II team game. Won March Town Chess Championship.
Repertoire III: W: QGD/Trompovsky; B/e4: French; B/d4: English Defence (...b6)*.
End of season B.C.F. grade I recall as 120-ish.
1978-79

[Cambridge Minor 3/4 (A tournament performance of B.C.F. 137). East Anglia Major 3 1/2 /5 (148). Thetford Major 4/5 (142).]
Repertoire IV: W: QGD/Indian; B/e4: French, Owen's, Sicilians with ...e6; B/d4: English Defence (...b6).
B.C.F. 124
1979-80
Cambridge University Chess Club. CUCC Championship 2 1/2 /6 (160). East Anglia Major 2/5 (120). Cambridge Major 4/6 (152). Thetford Premier 2/5 (144).
Repertoire V: W: English Staunton System (c4/Nc3/g3/Bg2/e3/Nge2); B/e4: Sicilian with ...e6; B/d4: English Defence (...b6).
B.C.F. 142
1980-81
Got my act together a bit more this season; of course, it's nice to be surrounded by strong opposition.
[CUCC Championship 3/6 (173). CU Major 2+1/2 / 5 (131). Thetford Premier 2/5 (144). ]
B.C.F. 152
1981-82
CU win National Minor Club Championship (now called the Major Cup) without me winning a single game, but I did have a great swindle.
B.C.F. 150
1982-83
Only four league games: 2 Sicilians as Black , and oddly two as White. [I play 1.e4 very rarely in matches, although I'll play anything at blitz.]
1983-84
Andover Chess Club. Few games: they played matches on Saturdays, when I was off seeing my partner of the time.
[Portsmouth Open 31/2/6 (176).]
1984-85
Cambridge City Chess Club. Very few games. Still playing Repertoire V.
B.C.F. 170
1985-86
Very few games. Still Repertoire V, but try the Modern Defence a couple of times.
B.C.F. 168
1986-92
Virtually no chess.
1992-93
Exeter Chess Club. A return to chess! I got stuck into every team I could, playing mostly 120-140-strength opposition, and did OK.
[East Devon Premier 3/5 (192).]
Repertoire VI: W: English Botvinnik system with c4/Nc3/g3/Bg2/e4/Nge2; B/e4: Modern Defence with ...c6; B/d4: Modern Defence with ...Nc6.
B.C.F. 167 a good return to form. I believe this one a bit more than the other 160+ grades, as it was based on 30+ games.
1993-94
Nothing terribly remarkable: I played less chess.
[East Devon Premier 2/5 (157). Frome Major 3/5 (174).]
B.C.F. 157
1994-95
Exeter win National Major Plate without me winning a single game. I won the Club Lightning Event this year, which is not a form of chess I have ever looked forward to!
[East Devon Premier 2/5 (170). Torbay Open 2/5 (170).]
Repertoire VII: W: King's Gambit/King's Indian Attack; B/e4: Modern Defence with ...c6; B/d4: Modern Defence with ...Nc6.
B.C.F. 153 (yeuch).
1995-6
You can read a report of my adventures at the East Devon Congress this year. Exeter do well in National Major Plate with the help of some wins but get firmly sat on by Huddersfield in the final.
[Paignton Challengers 4/7 (172), Spectrum Torquay Major 4/5 (170), Torbay Open 2+1/2 /5 (170), Weymouth Open 2/5 (164) East Devon Premier 3/5 (182).]
Repertoire VII: (still) - but I'm going off the King's Gambit and I'm losing too many with the Modern! Whither?
B.C.F. 168 (better!)
1996-7
I've felt pretty up-and-down this season: I had three good tournament results then one tournament from hell; I've stopped losing games with the Modern to 140-grade opposition, but managed to overlook two mates in two(!) this season, actually going on to lose both games. I also got crushed by Steve Homer whose current grade is 129 (but used to be 180+), which similarly did nothing for my grade...
[Paignton Challengers 4+1/2 /5 (170), Torbay Open 2+1/2 /5 (171), Weymouth Open 2/5 (171), East Devon Premier 2+1/2 /5 (140).]
Reportoire VII: (still) - the haemorrhage of losses with the Modern is drying up but I seem to have sprung some leaks elsewhere: no fault of the openings, though. I have made a conscious attempt to play different openings this year, particularly with Black: I've played 1...e5 a couple of times, which I haven't touched since I was a junior, and I even tried 1.d4 in one game. The King's Gambit issue hasn't really resolved itself in my mind, but no-one this year has replied 1...e5! That's got to be too much theory to carry around unused...
B.C.F 160 (worse!)
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I have put my grades in, not because I believe in any of them, but because there seems a fairly consistent pattern: the tournament performances have higher performance grades than the end-of-season grade. Apparently I play better in tournaments than league matches. [BCF 150 = ELO 1800 = USCF 1900].

Why should this be?

I think it is because, typically, I am meeting players stronger than I am in tournaments. Rather than differences between tournament and match games, it's about playing stronger players, and yes, my average grade against higher-graded players is always higher than my grading performance against lower-graded players. Do I play better than usual when playing opponents with higher grades? Or do they play worse? Or both? [A possible test of this is the East Devon Premier 1997: every opponent I played was graded lower than me, and I scored well below par. You might say that when I have a bad tournament, I will meet players like this, but you can see the same pattern with league match results.]

Anyhow, if you want to get your grade up, my advice is go into the section above your normal grade in a weekend Swiss. I have a suspicion this is good for your chess as well as your grade.

Illustrative games:

The formatting of these isn't very good PGN but I keep these in ChessBase format, which has a poor header protocol.
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This document (career.html) was last modified on 29th Jan 1996 by [cool blue cat]

Dr. Dave