There are few upsides to the Corona virus. Very few. But it is not wholly without its merits.
It has, for instance, caused a great many chess playing Liberals – who have up to now hidden their wood-pushing light under bushel – to join the NLC Chess Circle for some computational chess playing/boredom-fighting action. These past weeks have seen around ten NLC members join the Circle’s online club.
Tuesday 31 March saw the second of our (now weekly) online chess evenings. Along with the usual set of incorrigibles, we were delighted to welcome along NLC members Rob ‘blo1189’ Bitty and Nicholas ‘Ndi78’ Iounnou for some games. Welcome gents!
It currently looks like we’ll be welcoming even more next week. (And in further good news, Mister Dias is back in town and up to his old tricks, as will be seen…).
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…
There were three rounds of fast and furious NLC chess last Tuesday. As ever with online chess, the quality was variable and largely depended upon how far through the bottle of red each player was.
The first Game of the Week is noteworthy for Mister ‘njayd79’ Dias’s dogged defence in the face of overwhelming odds. A lesson to us all to keep going, keep checking, keep setting problems and play until your opponent makes a mistake. As Savielly Tatarkower said: “No game is ever won by resigning”. Nor drawn…as Mister Dias will now show.
The second game is a novelty. Not so because Mister Widdicombe lost a piece for nothing – an expected occurrence to regular readers – but a novelty because Mister Widdicombe was able to mount a fierce counterattack on the b file and swindle victory. So rarely is it possible to report a Widdicombe victory that the opportunity shall not be passed up.
The next session is set for Wednesday 08 March, at 7pm sharp.
Curses, I should have won that game and I wasn’t even in any time trouble. Well played Mister Dias not least for your determination, a lesson to us all.
Thank you Ben for organising our online fun. I look forward to getting involved again this coming Wednesday.