Battle Royal

A few days ago I played in the four nations chess league, and although it wasn't as disappointing as Hastings, in some ways it still felt that way.

The saturday game went ok though. I drew with super talent Shreyas Royal with the Black pieces.

                                    Delta hotel warwick hosted the second 4NCL weekend. 

As far as I can ascertain Shreyas is working pretty hard on chess and he seems to have been earmarked as a possible successor to the likes of Michael Adams, as being a dominant player in English chess. Of course the ambition should be to ultimately compete at the world level, not just beat up fellow British players in tournaments like the English championship and British championship, but it is not difficult to imagine Shreyas snapping up a lot of home titles, just as Adams has done.

While Adams is a good comparison, the player that I feel Shreyas is closest to in a way is Luke McShane; probably as he drew a lot of hype and attention when he was very young because his results and play was so startling. If the hype around Shreyas and Bodhana is just emerging, it is nothing compared to what centered around Luke when he was younger. Having finished ahead of Levon Aronian and Etienne Bacrot to win a world under ten championship, we all envisaged Luke as a future world champion.

So where did it go wrong for Luke? Well in truth it didn't. He still became a very strong Grandmaster, just that perhaps he was ultimately too normal to go down the route of a monstrously obsessive chessplayer, which is probably what you have to do to secure the world crown. Instead he got a career in banking and the occasional win over those who did go down that route, like Magnus Carlsen.

The concern surely from an English chess players fan perspective, is that these younger players like Shreyas and Bodhana are snapped up by another federation. We have seen top level chess players jump over to the United States in recent years, and in even more recent times the Uber talent Faustino Oro has left his native Argentina to go to Spain, at least partly because that country has a lot more tournaments for him to play in.

Of course this is speculation on my part and there is no evidence that a federation like Spain or The United States has any of the young English players on their radar. And the modus operandi with The United States tends to be about buying ready-made Super Gms, rather than speculating on who may or may not make the grade. Super Grandmasters who are apparently unhappy with the amount of support they are offered by their chess federation. 

That last point is perhaps one of the reasons why Malcolm Pein and Dominic Lawson strived so hard to secure government funding. They are surely aware that the players we have emerging now (and you could also include Freddie Gordon and Supratit Banerjee in that equation) are more promising than we have had for some years. If you don't at least try to make the effort to give them a head start, to at least show that you care, don't be surprised if they make that jump elsewhere. Hence why more money to the England chess team. Hence why they brought over Nikita Vitiugov to coach the young talents.

If the draw with Shreyas was acceptable, the fairly quick draw with White against Alexander Cherniaev was slightly less so. 

Here I played Bg5?!, losing all my advantage. 

Bg5 is wrong because it provokes ... f6, a move that Black wanted to play. So for example if White plays Bd2! here, ... f6 comes into the equation for Black, but then you have gained a move compared to the game. I thought I was being clever by weakening e6, but this isn't an issue for Black here as White can hardly attack that point with any success. 

I played bg5 fairly quickly and it it's something I've noticed during my games. At some point ego will take over and my instinct is telling me "I'll show you that I'm doing well here. I'll play quickly to prove that I'm much better!" 

Rather than working out the variations diligently. The more I think about Bg5, the more stupid it seems to play this almost instantly. How can I be certain Bg5 is the best move without bothering to calculate any variations?

After that Black had no issues and I was even concerned that I was worse, and in truth somewhat relieved when he offered a draw. A more stubborn character might have played on in any case. 

Whatever the verdict, what is clear is that to jump to the next level and for my results to improve, I need to rein in my ego and stop my hands jumping ahead of my brain. Or all I will be doing in the future is watching the younger players go further and further into the distance.