A great day out for 35 Lancashire Junior Chess players at the latest Lancashire Chess training day. These events are invite only, and are set up to provide a day of coaching and simultaneous games against the Lancashire Coaches.
Firstly, a special thank you for the staff and the AKS School in Lytham for hosting the event, with 35 children turning up on the day, it proved to be a popular event. The turnout was a lot better than expected so soon after the Easter Holidays!
Special thank you to my fellow coaches on the day, Steve Lamb and John Cooper.
A couple of “technical hitches” to contend with at the start, meant that we had to “ad-lib” a little with the schedule. My laptop was there, all ready to go with a mix of Chessbase material I had prepared. Unfortunately, the laptop was “too modern”, it only had HDMI ouput and the school’s projector system only had VGA. Still, it won’t go to waste, and next time I will take along an HMDI-VGA splitter!
John looked after the “strong” top-8 players, giving them some expert coaching advice suited to their experience and knowledge. All players played at least one serious game on the clocks, and they were also treated to a simul against yours truely!
The simul was hard work I can tell you! Not the normal simul, the boards were set up with specific endings to test the players endgame techniques. The event was very full-on, that none of the coaches had time for a break during the day, we all came away shattered!
It was for that reason, that I had not time for the usual photographs. However, we can partake in the photos that Paul Crouch took on the day and shared on the @AKSSchool twitter account.
Another busy, intense but fun @LancashireChess junior training day in the senior school hall. Thanks to the enthusiatic coaches for their support & guidance. #IndividualPathways pic.twitter.com/bv6zMscr78
— AKS Lytham (@AKSSchool) April 14, 2018
The first simul for the least experienced players was the following position (the coach having the black pieces!)
Two players managed to let me queen a pawn! Still not sure how. A few players fell for my plan of pushing my pawns, swapping off the pawns to leave the h-pawn and then getting my King back to the h8 square.
For the stronger players in the simul, they were given a slightly more difficult task.
A few players failed to convert this postion, and I managed to get this stalemate position four times, with two players taking the bait!
Overall, a great day of chess and some really interesting games from the players. All of the players were encouraged to write their moves down, I did not get many score sheets back. Will post some of the sample games in a follow up post.