Nigel Short & CJ de Mooi Tour - Shropshire Event 16 October 2011




The Picture Gallery
Pictures above courtesy of Iain Thompson - “Not to be reproduced without permission”.
Pictures above courtesy of Toby Neal - Pictures below courtesy Keith Tabner
 
Some Key Games
 
 
 

Shropshire Chess Association President's Report

The Planning Stage

The date of Sunday 16 th October has been established in my brain since 3 rd March this year, when Keith Tabner forwarded me an email, announcing that Nigel Short and CJ de Mooi were to repeat their highly successful tour in the UK. I emailed CJ expressing interest and received a reply within the hour, outlining details and options. The rest, as they say, is history.

I was keen to have a high quality event, which meant an excellent venue and facilities needed to be established at an early stage. The Wrekin Housing Trust, where I work, fitted the bill perfectly, as we have a large, flexible and well-equipped training suite. Moreover, when I spoke to our resident chef, Jacob Perry, he was certainly up for providing high quality catering on the day. We were on!

The Morning

The vision had been to provide a full day of chess activities and I had established early on that CJ and Nigel would not be able to arrive in Telford until the afternoon. We therefore started the day with a 5-minute blitz tournament for anyone who was interested. We had 22 players sign up for this and the event was won by William Bates (Priorslee Lions) with 4 ½ points out of 5. Equal on 4 points were Glyn Pugh (Priorslee Lions), Steve Rooney (Church Stretton) and Graham Shepherd (Church Stretton). The runner up slot went to Graham Shepherd, who had the best grading performance (very narrowly!) of the three.

CJ had indicated that he would have prizes available on the day, so William had to wait until later in the day to receive his prize – a DVD of the recent film on Bobby Fischer, “Bobby Fischer Against the World.”

An Army Marches on its Stomach!

Or at least, that's what my boss says. After the lightning tournament, it was lunchtime. Jacob and I had put together a chess-themed menu and a full roast dinner was on offer over the lunch break. This was well received by everyone I spoke to and proved very popular.

This report includes the menu and Nigel Short was sufficiently impressed with this to take one away at the end of the day. Nigel was also pleased to take away a copy of the other publication we produced, which was a souvenir brochure, kindly printed by Steve Rooney (who runs Plum Publishing for his day job). This looked highly professional and included many pictures of past simultaneous displays by masters in Shropshire. Some of these pictures can be seen on the Shropshire Chess website and others were supplied by various people around Shropshire (and beyond). Some copies are still available for £5 if anyone reading this wants to contact me.

As the lunch break passed, I began to experience every organiser's dread: “What if the stars of the show, CJ and Nigel, fail to make it for some reason?!” Here were all these expectant chess players, awaiting a chess bonanza and there was still scope for it all to go horribly wrong! I wasn't sure whether I could manage a 35-board simul – and, more to the point, it probably wouldn't have quite the attraction of Nigel Short doing it.

Needless to say, my fears were groundless and a few of those arriving towards the end of the lunch break reported that the Big Names had hit Telford. Nigel and CJ were more than happy to participate in the roast dinner (vegetarian for CJ) and we chatted while Nigel “pumped himself up with Coke, ready for the chess”.

The First Lecture

It transpired at lunchtime that Nigel hadn't been fully apprised of the lecture titles prior to the day. We had originally entitled the first lecture “A week in the life of a Grandmaster: so how do you defeat Karpov in a match?” Nigel had come prepared with some more current games to run through but offered his audience the option of sticking with the original title, or running with his material. A straw poll indicated a preference for the latter and in the first lecture, we received a fascinating insight into his game versus GM Antonio Fernandes of Portugal from the CUCA International Chess tournament, which took place in Luanda, Angola from May 15 to May 28 of 2011.

Nigel Short won this event and described this game as a crucial moment in the tournament. Fernandes was leading the tournament at the time and so the onus was on Nigel to win the game, in order to stand a reasonable chance of overtaking his opponent. Given the tournament standings, a draw would have been a very satisfactory result for Fernandes. Furthermore, given their respective ratings (Short 2682 and Fernandes 2404 at the time), it was to be expected that Fernandes would be aiming for an early, peaceful cessation of hostilities.

Short's opponent chose a popular way of playing for a draw as black – by playing the Petroff defence. At this point, Nigel made the amusing assertion, “When I'm FIDE President, I'm going to ban this opening!” What followed was the struggle between the higher rated player, gradually building on a small edge, giving the opponent maximum opportunity to err and being ready to pounce when the lower rated player did so. What was especially interesting was the way in which there was no obvious error from Fernandes but gradually his position became difficult, then critical and finally lost.

The Second Lecture

After a short break (no pun intended!) Nigel took the audience through his game from the 2011 British Championship which had one the best game prize – his game versus the rapidly improving Jonathan Hawkins. There was a parallel with the first game in that Nigel Short was playing against a lower-rated opponent, who probably would have been content with a draw. A late middle game / ending was reached which many a club player would have abandoned as drawn.

At various stages in this game Nigel Short stopped and challenged us to come up with moves. Some of these suggestions were quickly dismissed (“That would be illegal!” or “If black plays this, white plays that and black can safely resign.”) Other suggested moves were acknowledged as perfectly plausible, even if they were not played in the game itself.

The key moment in the game was highlighted by Nigel when he commented that he observed he really needed his rook to make a diagonal move. This prompted the plan of exchanging a pair of pawns in order to enable the rook to achieve its ideal placement. An impressive king invasion forced the win through, completing the duo of Nigel Short's recent victories acting as excellent illustrations of how a top class player thinks during a game.

The Showpiece Simultaneous Display

After a break, during which Carl Portman interviewed Nigel Short for Defence Focus magazine (see “The Nigel Short Interview” on the Shropshire website), we reached the stage of the proceedings everyone had been eagerly anticipating – the simultaneous display.

Because we had filled the places for the display in good time and our event was the first of the tour, it had been agreed that we could sell up to ten more than the original 30 places we had been allocated. In fact, we had sold 35 places, with 34 actually turning up on the day. There was quite a range of grades represented amongst Nigel Short's opponents (lowest 81, highest 205). Over lunch, Nigel Short commented that several of our players would have been deemed too strong to face Gary Kasparov, who specifies a maximum grade whenever he gives a simultaneous display!

Play started at 4.30 in the afternoon. Beforehand, Nigel explained the ground rules: no “passes”, make your move as the Grandmaster arrives at the board, and reset or clear away the board and pieces as each game finishes. CJ sternly insisted that all mobile phones be turned off (“not just silent, but off !”) Nigel set off at a pace, shaking hands with each opponent before he had made the first move, but proceeding so quickly that the photographer struggled to keep up with the planned shot of each player shaking hands with the GM (happily, he did get at least one shot of each player subsequently).

As time went on, various positions got more and more desperate looking. Near me, a queen soon dropped off. Nigel Short proceeded steadily and, generally speaking, made simple, strong moves, eschewing flamboyant attacks or openings. A number of people commented to me that they could see what he was doing but were entirely powerless to stop it!

In the final reckoning, just two games were drawn (Jamie Hopkins and Nigel Ferrington). Jamie won the best game prize, judged by Nigel Short himself. At around 9.30 in the evening, just one game was left to finish – that against the highest rated opponent, Nick Rutter. For the first time since the display started, Nigel sat down (chair quickly provided by CJ). Of course, all simultaneous displays come down to this in the end: one-on-one versus the master. Nick's position was difficult at this stage and in a few minutes it was all over. Nigel looked tired but triumphant. He had been playing, on his feet, without a break or much by way of refreshment for over five hours against some of Shropshire's best players. To concede just two draws was impressive indeed.

CJ and Nigel still made time for a few more signings and photo opportunities to cap off a truly memorable day for Shropshire chess. Although I too was tired, I was also elated that the day had gone so well. The parting comment from one player, just before I went home was, “What's the next event, Francis?” I thought I might have a week or two off before answering that question but another high profile Shropshire Chess event will certainly be on my agenda for 2012!

Thank you to all those who helped on the day, the players and spectators who turned up and, of course, to Nigel Short and CJ de Mooi, whose energies and efforts provided a fantastic spectacle for us all.

Francis Best - President, Shropshire Chess Association

Epilogue

The October Nigel Short simul tour ended on the 27th after visiting locations in England and Wales. This turned out to be a little different as Nigel decided to include 3 clock simuls which were hugely enjoyable for all taking part, although the good Doctor admitted they were considerably more stressful than he'd anticipated.

In the regular events he scored a magnificent 96.25% but did lose a game to Charles Summers in Cardiff. Charles won a special prize of the ‘Bobby Fischer Against the World' DVD for being the first person to defeat Nigel in one of our tours.

I want to sincerely thank all the organisers, the Chess Shop, the venues, journalists but primarily the players for coming out and so enthusiastically supporting the February and October tours. Our nominated charities were Shelter and Barnardo's and even though some parties have dismissed this, I believe it was the right thing to do to make charitable donations. They have both expressed their sincere gratitude for the money raised.

Throughout the country Nigel and I were continually offered wholehearted appreciation for our personal work and the wider work of the ECF board (one typical but very welcome comment from Ashton-Under-Lyne was that ‘the people on the ground are very grateful for all you've done and the vast majority will always support you') and it is so encouraging to have the backing of the wide chess community. I personally am delighted to have been re-elected as President and will continue to work hard – I care deeply about chess and it's good to know that's acknowledged. I do understand the criticisms levelled at me by some people for my more radical methods – one major issue seems to have been my habit of putting my own money into chess and into the federation but in the light of these concerns, I shall desist from doing so immediately.

On a much more positive note, I'm currently planning something very special for next year which should feature prominently in the public consciousness and I hope to be allowed to bring this to fruition. A number of high profile people and the media have been invited so hopefully this might be a major push in the quest for chess publicity.

I am not one to back down from a challenge and ‘if I think something is right, I'll pursue it even if it is unpopular'. I particularly believe in this sentiment but these are not my words but rather those of a very prominent international English chess figure who used it to express his support for me when we met on the recent tour. If you truly care about chess, we can work together to ensure success – we have a great and unique opportunity in 2012 to take advantage of the international attention on London and the rest of the country and I hope we can achieve greatness for the game we love.

I have already been invited to more than a dozen chess events in the next 6 months and want to express my thanks for all the invitations. However, due to pressures of my career, I won't be able to attend them all but as always, if I can do anything to help, please just ask. I will continue to travel the country wherever and whenever I am asked as I'm sure the benefits of a visible and passionate President are apparent and essential.

Thank you again for the wonderful vindication of the work we're doing and with some of the events planned for the next 12 months, as a chess family, we'll make it an Olympic year in many ways!

- CJ de Mooi - President ECF

Compiled by Keith Tabner. To add to this page please email me - keithtabner@hotmail.com