Winter Butterfly  -  21d    28/6/03

Dear Friends 

I'm a bit busy, so the following are simply copies of emails received in the order in which they arrived.  Many thanks to Bill Hewitt, Jon Gilbert and Gwynfor Rees for taking the trouble to write this edition between them.  Hope to see as many as possible of you at the rapidplay in Swansea tomorrow. 

Dai James

WCU CUP Semi-Final 

David,

            You may wish to report the following match in the Winter Butterfly.  

In a replay of last years final, White Knights entertained Cardiff at Llanelli Conservative Club. The closely fought match ended with Cardiff winning on board count after a nailbiting finish and thereby gaining revenge for last years final defeat.

 16/6/2003 

White Knights                        Cardiff 

1) W Hewitt (w) 2060    draw     J Trevelyan    2182

2) A Young       2005    0-1       A Spice         2112

3) J Garcia       1991    1-0        M Adams      2106

4) D Guy          1920    draw      P L Davies    1850

                                    2-2 

Cardiff win by BBE 

First to finish was the board 1 game where Bill Hewitt played John Trevelyan for the fifth time in 11 months (I have now played John in every team event that I have played in during the last 11 months), A philidor defence threatened to become extremely lively, but with white short of time, black offered a draw, seeing that playing for a win involved some risk to both sides.

 Jason Garcia had sac'd a pawn in the grand prix attack against Mark Adams' sicilian. Jason seemed to have a slight initiative and, taking advantage of Mark Adams' time trouble, he won the exchange and then sac'd a rook to force mate.

 This left the Llanelli team firmly in the driving seat. However, avid readers of the WCU yearbook will remember that in last years final, White Knights won the Welsh Cup Final when they were 0-2 down ..........................

A draw on board 2 would win the match for White Knights at this point, regardless of the board 4 game. Alan Young was a pawn up after a 1.Nc3 opening and David Guy had somehow survived an atrocious position on board 4. However, Alan Spice managed to swap down to a king and pawn ending and after rounding up the stray pawn he was down, proceeded to make headway and won the game. This was also the 4th time that Alan Spice and Alan Young have played in the last 11 months!

 What happened on board 4, was quite amazing. Just after the first time control, when Peter Davies had failed to finish David Guy off, David won a piece, leaving him with rook and 2 bishops, plus pawns, against rook and bishop and one less pawn. However, in the time scramble that ensued, material was really a secondary issue, as the clock took over. David failed to checkmate his opponent, missing a couple of mating nets (easy for spectators to see when they are not playing of course) and blundered his extra piece to emerge into a drawn ending - where he forced a perpetual check when the game had reached nearly 70 moves. David had not noticed though, that Peter Davies' flag had fallen at least a dozen moves before, everybody else noticed this, but David, embroiled in the board, had not, and the draw stood!

 This means that Cardiff will play the winners of Nidum and Caerphilly in the final on July 5th.

 Bill Hewitt

Welsh Challenge Cup

All the challenge cup results are now available

regards, Jon

http://www.gilbertj36.freeserve.co.uk/ 

Tri Nations under 12 and under 14 

Annwyl Dai  

Tri-Nations tournament Irvine 2003 

Despite being warned in Sept 2002 (and many times after) that the Welsh team would not be able to play on the weekend of the 21st of June the Scots went ahead and arranged the tournament for this date. The Welsh Junior Committee decided to put together the strongest team available from amongst the players not participating in the EPSCA tournament in Prestatyn.

 The journey by train up was a long gruelling one which involved 4 connections, but all the children behaved impeccably and I managed not to loose anyone!!  Despite being heavily outgraded on most of the boards the team put up a good fight and the final results do not reflect how well they played.  On a brighter note, the girls in the team did well and managed to score half of the teams points. Go-go girlpower..! ;--)