Online chess is a great leveller. The mighty slip up, the mediocre achieve occasional brilliance and the weak from time to time get to land a sneaky knock out sucker punch.
Nonetheless, the collected Liberal chess players gulp when they see Doctor ‘NRK104’ Kirby log in to the night’s chess. The Doctor never takes his chess lightly, and has a fearsome will to win.
So it’s been a surprise that the Doctor hasn’t been topping the rankings. The outstanding recent performances of Mister ‘Ndi78’ and Mister ‘scottwestron’ Westron have so far eluded the NLC Board 1, Blitz and Lightning Champion. It won’t take long before he masters the online stuff. But Wednesday 06 May was not to be; the Doctor was held to a draw against Mister ‘Ndi78’ Iounnou and beaten by Miss ‘Leegunner1’ Widger following a nifty 17…f3 pawn sac to open up the King (see below).
In the end, Mister ‘Ndi78’ Iounnou again pushed through with an incredible number of games played and took the gold for the second time in three weeks. Top chess.
Games of the week
Each week, this journal’s Editorial Committee will present to the Chess Circle two online games from that week’s session that, in their esteemed view, display a particularly lively charm. Perhaps it will be a ferocious attack, or a dogged defence, maybe a catastrophic blunder or simply something that piques the Committee’s interest…
We said chess is a leveller. Here’s what can happen to even the best of them…
Games of the week are selected against three categories: brilliancies, peculiarities, and blunders. Last week the Editorial Committee brought readers the peculiarity of a smothered mate. This week it’s a blunder. See if you can spot White’s inexcusable oversight (hint: it’s really not hard).
See you all next week, Wednesday 13 May. We may try a slightly different type of competition (a ‘Swiss’ rather than an ‘Arena’ so a bit of a slower pace of games but more variation in opponents).
In the meantime, keep chessing, Liberals.
Well done Leela. Must admit I underestimated the strength of black’s attack. In the cold light of day, if my danger antennae had been tuned I would have played 16 h4 to get some dark square control, block things up a bit and then play c4. Probably should have played h4 on move 9 too. Still, that’s chess.
Well Mr Ioannou. Think you had the best percentage on the night too, as well as the number of games.
Ben – you seem to be having a thing about getting your queen to h8 and not converting….
What better square for the queen than h8? I’m sure Fischer said something like that…
Anyway, I struggle to convert with or without a queen on h8!