English Chess Forum

There is coverage of today's Varsity Match at ...

http://www.bcmchess.co.uk/news/varsity2010.html

At the moment the match stands at 4-3 to Cambridge but Oxford have chances of winning the final game.

A fantastic win from Steffen tied the match at 4 all! So Oxford retain the Margaret Pugh trophy.

Final results were:

Bd Oxford Rating v Cambridge Rating
1b Gustavo German (Worcester) 2515 ½-½ Gabor Pinter (Queens') 2349m
2w Athanasios Tsanas (St Cross) 2264 1-0 Li Wu (Churchill) 2344
3b Michael Healey (University) 2089 0-1 Peter Roberson (Churchill) 2256
4w Steffen Schaper (Exeter) (2010) 1-0 Sven Quist (Dept. of Genetics) 2141c
5b Szymon Pozimski (St Peters) (2066) ½-½ J Stuart Robertson (Trinity) (2120)
6w Graham Morris (St Anne's) 2034 0-1 Mikhail Tyomkyn (Corpus Christi) 2111
7b Yangshi Yu (Exeter) 1978 1-0 Richard Lee (Christ's) (2058)
8w Agnese Salputra (Keble) (1730) 0-1 Selina Khoo (Murray Edwards) 1981

Check out John's link to his report on BCM for a link to the of the games. They make interesting viewing. Fritz suggests that the attack Agnese found was actually good for white had she found the right continuation. It's just a shame she had only 30 second (and no - I'm not exaggerating) for about 15 moves before the time control in such a sharp position). Once Gustavo managed to get over his opening theory disadvantage on board 1, it was good to see him play so well to get back into the game and force the draw. And of course it's worth looking at Steffen's match saving win - his technique and poise were incredible under such pressure.

Yes, an absolutely splendid performance by Steffen to tie the match. He was under huge pressure, with a large crowd clustered around the board. However, my initial report of the match was incorrect. It is not true to say that "Oxford retained the trophy" (by virtue of having won the 2009 match). I wrote what I wrote before consulting the gentlemen who act as guardians of the Varsity match rules and they confirmed to me that there is no such concept in the case of a drawn match. Physically, the trophy stays in the possession of the RAC Club but I am told that, even in the days when it was allowed to be taken away by the teams, it would be held for six months each by the two teams after a drawn match. My apologies if I have misled anyone.

Eoin Devane wrote:Once Gustavo managed to get over his opening theory disadvantage on board 1, it was good to see him play so well to get back into the game and force the draw.

Presumably he switched his phone off this week?

I guess that I am developing different tastes from John in British chess! He was fascinated by Gibraltar, where just one player among 40 on the top 20 boards was British, pretty much throughout all ten rounds; I was not. Like many former Oxbridge players, he retains an understandable fascination with the Varsity match; myself I would not recognise a single one of the victorious (?) Oxford team, and only a handful of the Cambridge team. Li Wu and Peter Roberson seem to be the only players brought up in the UK who are over 2200. There seems to be something rather unfortunate about the state of British chess, rather than something celebratory, when the best players in the top universities now mostly come from abroad (I guess that the same is true of UCL too).

Jonathan Rogers wrote:I guess that I am developing different tastes from John in British chess! He was fascinated by Gibraltar, where just one player among 40 on the top 20 boards was British, pretty much throughout all ten rounds; I was not. Like many former Oxbridge players, he retains an understandable fascination with the Varsity match; myself I would not recognise a single one of the victorious (?) Oxford team, and only a handful of the Cambridge team. Li Wu and Peter Roberson seem to be the only players brought up in the UK who are over 2200. There seems to be something rather unfortunate about the state of British chess, rather than something celebratory, when the best players in the top universities now mostly come from abroad (I guess that the same is true of UCL too).

You're right, most of the top Universities have a strong overseas contingent. Although, it's not that bad. The boat race has imported foreigners, too.

UCL has Peter Vas, a FM. He is technically a British citizen, but registered to Sweden.

Bath has a swathe of strong English players, Chris Dorrington, Peter Poobalasingam, James Jackson and Paul Griffiths are all 2000+. (One is a FM, the other a CM if he applied for it.) Over 4 boards, I reckon Bath would give both Oxford and Cambridge a run for their money.

As an aside, do we not do top buttons up on shirts, or button up jackets for formal photographs anymore? Standards are slipping...

Admittedly the world class standing of our top Universities does increase the probability of very talented foreigners coming and displacing our top chess players and boat racers, etc. But the same was true fifteen years ago and the same trend was not then apparent.

Jonathan Rogers wrote:I guess that I am developing different tastes from John in British chess! He was fascinated by Gibraltar, where just one player among 40 on the top 20 boards was British, pretty much throughout all ten rounds; I was not. Like many former Oxbridge players, he retains an understandable fascination with the Varsity match; myself I would not recognise a single one of the victorious (?) Oxford team, and only a handful of the Cambridge team. Li Wu and Peter Roberson seem to be the only players brought up in the UK who are over 2200. There seems to be something rather unfortunate about the state of British chess, rather than something celebratory, when the best players in the top universities now mostly come from abroad (I guess that the same is true of UCL too).

Whilst I partly agree with you, David Howell and Gawain Jones have yet to go to university and Stephen Gordon went to/is still at Birmingham University so there are some mitigating circumstances. I do have concerns though that 16-21 is the age group where players can drift away from the game so it would be nice if the varsity match and the recent university team event keeps players involved. Having never been to unviersity I've no idea if it's the social scene or amount of work that contributes to players disappearing but I suspect it may be the former.

LozCooper wrote:I've no idea if it's the social scene or amount of work that contributes to players disappearing but I suspect it may be the former.

Speaking from my own experience, the first year is fine, there's plenty of time to get involved in anything (most of the time the former, it would seem). After that, the amount of work increases.

Credit where it's due here - Ben Purton has been at University, and it seems has ran a 4NCL team for much of that time. It shows that if people can be bothered, they'll stay involved.

The event in Oxford showed me there are lots of competent, enthusiastic players, good enough to play for a club, but they just aren't graded (I seemed to lose to half of them...). The idea of joining a club may never have crossed their mind. In Oxford, I was asked frequently by the not-so-strong players how players get a grade. There are people who want to play actively, and get a grade, but don't know how to. I'm doing my best to send those teams in particular information about local tournaments.

Jonathan Rogers wrote:Admittedly the world class standing of our top Universities does increase the probability of very talented foreigners coming and displacing our top chess players and boat racers, etc. But the same was true fifteen years ago and the same trend was not then apparent.

Considering the manifest weakness of the two teams, I don't think the term "displacing" is particularly appropriate in this context. More a case of helping to ensure the whole thing retains some semblance of quality. Must be reasonably unusual for any players involved to be in their 30s though!

Well we can only work with what we've got! If some of the international students are stronger than the home ones, then we're going to select them. Perhaps we should look at the overall standard of juniors coming through in this country. Bearing in mind that Mike, Graham and Yangshi are all almost certainly at least slightly undergraded (Mike's been performing at about 200-level for most of this season and neither Graham nor Yangshi has played that much in the past couple of years), how many English juniors who are of an age that they might be going to University this Autumn are stronger than they are? Looking at the "Top Juniors" grading list, I'd say only Callum Kilpatrick, Robert Lydiard, Kishan Lakhani plus maybe one or two others. The probability that any individual will end up at Oxford or Cambridge is rather low, so I think it is there that our "problem" lies.

LozCooper wrote:I do have concerns though that 16-21 is the age group where players can drift away from the game so it would be nice if the varsity match and the recent university team event keeps players involved.

Well, unfortunately I no longer fall into that age range but I did play in the recent university team event and this had been my first tournament for about 10 years. Why do people drift away? When I think of tournaments I think of school halls (often freezing in winter), a tiring commute, a massive gender inbalance and generally unfriendly and/or socially awkward people. I think chess is a wonderfully interesting thing but in my experience tournaments are not usually the best setting for enjoying the game. Why did I play this tournament? Partly out of curiosity, partly because the other players in the Bath team are very laid back and friendly. Looking back over my experience of playing chess since I was 16, I can say that all the most enjoyable moments have been playing informally in cafes or bars. I will almost certainly be 'involved' in the game in this sense until I die, I might not play another tournament though.

A lot about me there, but I think this might be true for a lot of people who 'drift away'.

Paul

So what did you think of the recent BUCA event? Did it whet your appetite or switch you off? If the latter, what would have needed to be different?

I think this is a fanastically interesting topic and I think it raises a lot of questions.
Firstly, may I say that it is great that Paul has come back to the game. I still remember our first game from the U11 trial

Griffiths - Turner
1. e4 c5
2. c3 d6
3. Nf3 Nf6
4. Be2 Nc6
5. d4 Nxe4
6. d5 Whoops
(the move order might not be exactly right)

I think Paul represents an aspect of chess where players give up (at an earlier and earlier age), but then return to it in their late teens (or in Paul's case a bit later). That is not necessarily a bad thing for chess in general, but it impacts on how chess should be marketted and the BUCA tournament is simply an ACE idea.
In terms of the Varsity match, I think the fact that there are a lot of foreign players is something of a red herring, my main concern is why are the teams so weak (in historical terms). This may be a blip and things might return to normal in the near future. However, I suspect it is something more. I think it is increasingly difficult to be both a good chess player and an academic. As chess has evolved the greater use of computers means that the amount of information available is vast and the time required to stay at a high level can have a negative impact on academic performance. However, in my view of greater importance is our exam system. Modular exams mean that students have exams every week (well almost) and now that 3 A's is nowhere near sufficient to secure a place at a top University, the best students are pushed towards taking 5 or 6 A levels or 'advanced' papers. It is perhaps not surprising then that they have less time for chess (or horse riding, or tennis, or just thinking about stuff). Perhaps things will change and I think there are moves in the right direction, but I would not expect to see really strong Oxbridge teams in the near future. That though is not a problem for chess, but merely a wider problem in our education system.

Matthew Turner wrote:Modular exams mean that students have exams every week (well almost) and now that 3 A's is nowhere near sufficient to secure a place at a top University, the best students are pushed towards taking 5 or 6 A levels or 'advanced' papers. It is perhaps not surprising then that they have less time for chess (or horse riding, or tennis, or just thinking about stuff). Perhaps things will change and I think there are moves in the right direction, but I would not expect to see really strong Oxbridge teams in the near future. That though is not a problem for chess, but merely a wider problem in our education system.

Absolutely right.

At the moment, I have one piece of coursework ongoing (one to be handed in in under two hours, which I should probably be printing off about now...), and have three tests over the next fortnight, each 10% of the module. Then we get to Easter for a three-week holiday, when I'll be lumbered with five pieces of coursework, one for each module (apart from the one I'm about to hand in). When I return, two weeks of lectures, then five exams worth between 75% and 90% of the modules. The problem isn't so much the volume of work as the stress of having to do it all, the last thing you want to do is spend more time on a mentally straining activity, such as chess.

The same is true at GCSE and A Level, there's someone at my school who is interested in chess, but has no time to play it other than the odd school match. However, he did get 14 A* at GCSE last year. Year 10 and 11 are filled up with coursework and impromptu mock exams and tests. It's no wonder children don't have time to spend a weekend at a chess congress.