This is an article about my games from the Manchester Summer Congress. If this interests you consider entering the Bolton Rapidplay this December.

The Manchester Summer Congress took place from Friday August 18th to Sunday August 20th. The congress featured the Manchester Junior Championship on the 18th followed up by a Minor, Major and FIDE Open congress across the weekend. The University of Bolton kindly sponsored the event, this included the entry fee for all juniors attending the Junior Championship. This led to 68 entries from juniors of all abilities and from places across the country, there were too many players to host a Swiss tournament, so the unrated players played in a separate unrated tournament called the Plate.

Nine players from the Bolton Junior Club participated in the tournaments, some were playing in their first-ever chess tournament. I, alongside fellow Bolton teammate Ashton Morrissey, registered to participate in both the Junior Championship as well as the Minor Congress. In terms of timings, the Junior Championship started at 10:30 AM and was set to end at 4:30 PM, and the first round of the minor congress started at 6 PM meaning I would have a one-and-a-half-hour break between the prize giving and my first game.

The morning of day one was fairly uneventful. The night before I had already chosen the openings I’d use as well as packed my bag and prepared clothes to wear.  I entered the playing hall with about 15 minutes to spare before the round and checked my opponent. I’d be playing with the white pieces against Amandeep Singh. I hadn’t really considered the age range of a tournament like this, I’m 15 and the age limit of the tournament was 21 but I still expected most players to be between the 10-18 range. Amandeep was six years old and was playing in the tournament along with his eight-year-old brother Adamjeet. Despite being 2 and a half times younger than me Amandeep seemed to have decades of experience and his rating of 1175 was extremely respectable for someone who still hasn’t finished Key Stage One. I played King’s Gambit as planned, he declined with 2…Nf6 and after 3.Nc3 we transposed into the Vienna Gambit. Amandeep blundered early and was quickly overrun in the centre; I launched an attack towards his king which entered with checkmate on the twentieth move.

I was the ninth seed for the tournament but was going through a pretty bad run of form stretching back to a ½/5 at the EJCOA National Youth Finals in July. My Rapid rating was 1411 at the start of the tournament and my Standard rating was 1584, the lowest since January. My opponent in the next game was my Bolton teammate Ashton Morrissey. Ashton’s a few years younger than me but has an incredible knowledge of chess, we have similar attack-minded playstyles making him extremely tricky to play against. I started his clock and he played pawn to d4, I then scratched my hand and went into a 15-second think. As far as I knew, Ashton was an e4 player, so this change was some kind of home-cooked preparation. My plan was to play the Dutch against d4, but I was extremely hesitant due to Ashton’s tendencies to play wild gambits, I also didn’t want to play symmetrically as I have a deathly fear of playing on the black side of a London System. I settled on 1…c5, the Old Benoni Defence. I’ve played on this on one other occasion, against Edward Chu at a blitz tournament in Swinton, my memory of that game is hazy but I know that I won in a fairly complicated middlegame. Ashton pushed his pawn to d5 and we continued the game, he played a slight inaccuracy on the ninth move but the position remained from slightly better to equal. I played the aggressive 12…g5 beginning to encroach on his space and threatening to launch my pawns to remove the defenders of his king. A few moves down the line I calculated a bishop sacrifice to blow open the kingside, I chose to make another preparing move and missed the immediate knockout blow. He offered me a queen trade, perhaps concerned at the growing strength of my attack, I settled upon the bishop sacrifice, a game-losing blunder. After my queen joined the attack I realised that my rook was completely undefended, one simple capture later and the game was as good as lost. My attack carried on and I chose to play until the end ,searching for tricks as his time ticked lower, and after a few moves of pressing forward I caught him. His king was smothered by his own pieces, and after a check from my dark squared bishop the queen had no option but to sacrifice herself. I went on to convert in a clean manner meaning I was now on two points from a possible 2.

I lost the scoresheets from the third and fourth rounds but they were both memorable for separate reasons. Mikhail Shkuro would play black against me in round 3, this is where something interesting happened. Before the game, Alex Burke asked me who I was playing, and I replied with the name of my opponent. I don’t remember what he said exactly but it was something that suggested that my chances were slim. Once the game started he played an unusual opening, normally I wouldn’t think much of it but this time I found myself spending considerably more time in the opening in expectation that I would stumble into a trap of some sort. At one point I thought I had a game-winning tactic, but Mikhail wiggled his way out of trouble and escaped with a slightly worse position, it was here that I think I began to overestimate his position and once I spotted a chance to force a draw by boxing in his queen I didn’t hesitate to make a draw after only 15 moves of play. To this day, about a week later, I’m still not fully certain if I should have played on or if I would’ve played on without Alex’s input, nevertheless, I was happy with half a point. My next game was against Toby Quaite, I didn’t know anything about Toby until the day before when I was going through the player list and realised his Lichess username was just his actual name. Because of this, I expected d4 as well as a French Defence should he play black, it wasn’t much but it was something to work with. I played the Dutch and got into a difficult spot at the seventeenth move mark. Toby had played the game without any thought and had just about the same 25 minutes that he started with, I was playing a bit slower until I took a think which pushed my time below the 10-minute mark. After I played my seventeenth move I was fairly confident I’d dealt with a few problems in the position but I was far from equal, it was at that point in which Toby offered me a draw which I accepted without much hesitation. Two draws under twenty moves definitely wasn’t something I’d done before but it meant I was on 3/4 going into the final rounds and still within a chance of finishing in joint third.

The tournament was going to be won by Alex Burke or Amanthika Anbalagan who had 4/4 and would meet each other in the final round. I’d be playing Archie Flavell with my only option being to play for a win. I watched Archie completely destroy someone with the black pieces in an earlier round so I was aware he was a fairly strong player, however, I had basically no other knowledge of who he was. Before the tournament, I’d chosen to switch to e4 permanently. I’m currently 3/3 with the Polish Opening and I’ve also played d4 with some good results however what swayed me to e4 was a YouTube video of the King’s Gambit by a person who I’ve forgotten the name of. Flavell played the Caro-Kann and ran into another piece of my home-cooked preparation. I played the Advance variation and after he followed the main line with 3…Bf5 I played knight to c3 followed up by an early pawn to g4. I immediately lost my advantage out of the opening, most likely due to a lack I of knowledge, but I ended up with a playable position. I spent considerable time in the early middlegame, the majority was spent trying to find a way to box in his queen which was swarmed by my pieces and sealed out by his own. Unfortunately, the queen wriggled her way out and forced me into playing an endgame down a pawn. Despite the material deficit, his pawn structure was shattered and his king was vulnerable, I won the pawn back soon after and entered an endgame where I had a rook and bishop and against his rook and knight. I created two passed pawns and his knight proved ineffective against the speed of the attack. He resigned after 70-something moves; we were the only remaining players left in the hall but I knew that I’d played a tournament I was happy with. 3 wins and two solid draws were enough to earn a trophy for a joint third trophy, a trophy which was also sponsored by the University of Bolton.

Normally this is where the story ended but for me, I was less than halfway done. After the Junior Tournament, I went downstairs to the cafeteria, bought a muffin and got ready for my next game against Grieg Ichim from the Swinton and Worsley Chess Club. I’ve played Grieg on one previous occasion, also with the black pieces, where he prematurely resigned after under 20 moves of playing. He opened with a King’s Indian Attack and later played pawn to c4 and then pawn to b4 creating a pawn rush on the queenside. I played in the style of a Classical Dutch and started a pawn attack of my own with pawn to g5 followed up by pawn to f4 trying to tear apart his position before he tore apart into mine. To aid the speed of my attack I sacrificed a pawn on the queenside and later sacrificed a bishop on the kingside to entomb his bishop and threaten a rook lift to deliver checkmate. At this point I thought I’d won the game until he placed his knight in the centre of the board to prevent my rook from providing the finishing touch, the only defensive move and a move that should’ve one of the game. I played pawn to d5 trying to remove the knight, he should’ve pinned the pawn to my king, keeping his knight in the centre and leaving me with pretty much nothing. Instead he dropped his knight back, my rook swung over from f8 to f6 and then to h6 to support my queen. I delivered mate on h2 to end my first day at the Bolton Arena with 4 wins, 2 draws and a nice glass trophy.

Day 2 of the Manchester Summer Congress was one which I was fairly confident going into. Before yesterday I’d won only one competitive game of chess in two months, I was definitely not playing perfectly but I was enjoying playing a lot more. Round 2 of the Minor was against Lawrence Harold, an experienced player from the Eccles Chess Club. He finished on 3.5/5 at his last congress in Swinton against extremely tough opposition so he was definitely going to be a sterner test than Grieg was the night before. He accepted the King’s Gambit and we entered a line where White sacrifices his rook on the kingside to harass the black king. He gave a check with his queen on e7 before capturing the rook, the best move. I attacked my bishop with his queen and he slid one square forward, this allowed to bring my knight into the attack with a check and after one more discovered check from my bishop my knight rode triumphantly into c7, forking the king and queen but most importantly delivering checkmate. This was my first game in the King’s Gambit Accepted and it was over in under 10 minutes, I’d spent no time thinking and Lawrence had also played fairly quickly up until the final three of four moves of the game. This may sound all good but it gave me just over four hours to kill before the round 3. I hung around the Bolton Wanderers stadium ahead of their game against Wigan Athletic I then returned to Bolton town centre and read in the library. I wasn’t hungry nor was I in any hurry to go home and come back to the tournament later. In the end, I decided to walk around Bolton town centre before returning back with an hour to go for my game against Joshua Mullane.

Joshua was one of the lowest-rated players in the tournament but was on 2 points out of a possible 2 and had held his own against higher rated opposition In previous rounds. He played d4 and I played in the same Classical Dutch manner as I’ve done two times previously. This time he allowed me to develop an attack against his king pretty much effortlessly as I moved my knight to the e4 square and my rook up to line against his king to combine with my sniper of a bishop on the b7 square. His position was slightly worse until he jumped his knight forward to hit my rook, unfortunately, this turned out to be the losing mistake. I had three options; one was to move the rook away, another was to use my rook as a bulldozer and sacrifice it to blow up the home of his castled king, and the final option was to move my knight out of the way in a forcing manner so my bishop and rook could both see the g2 square. I dismissed the first option with little thought as it didn’t seem right, option 2 was the one I spent the most time on but I also disregarded it and just sacrificed my knight on the c3 square. He captured the knight and my rook, combined with the bishop and incoming queen were primed to deliver a final blow to the black king. He played one more move and resigned. Three wins out of three.

I learnt who I’d be playing in round 4 the night before, it would be top seed Toby Quaite. He was the top-seeded player and I was the third seed so I expected I’d be playing him at some point in the later rounds. Toby is a die-hard French Defence player and, as suggested by his chess.com account, knows the Winawer variation a lot better than I ever will. I considered d4, c4, b4 and anything in between. In the end, I settled upon the King’s Indian Attack on the morning of the game as playing in the style of a French Defence gives white good attacking chances. After the game, he told me he would have played the Classical Variation, something which I would’ve liked to know beforehand but such is the nature of chess. Instead, we ended up playing a Reversed Grunfeld where I was the one pressing my opponent out of the opening. I missed a chance to play an early Bg5 which would have placed his centre under a lot more pressure, the advantage would have been far from winning but it would have made his position a lot more difficult to defend. He found a way to sacrifice a pawn to develop all his pieces and then force a trade of queens. In the end, no matter, how many complications I tried to create, the opposite-coloured bishops would mean the game was heading to a draw. After I played my 27th move he offered me a draw and I accepted. A draw with white was annoying but far from fatal, Toby was higher rated than me but had zero winning chances over the course of the game. My final game was against Neil Jackson and I would need to get the full point to win my section.

I played the Alekhine Defence which transposed into the Lion Defence later on. I played in an unusually paranoid fashion and delayed castling kingside to castle queenside to allow an attack on my king. I had limited little choice but to sit back and hope that he’d trade into a losing king and pawn endgame. He had doubled c and f pawns as well as isolated a pawn meaning that he didn’t have the option to end his attack and realistically needed to win one of my kingside pawns to gain an advantage. Instead, he traded all his pieces and allowed me a completely winning endgame. I advanced my king and he wasted another move pushing a pawn forward. After realising that the game was all but won I began to see ghosts. Not literally, but from a chess standpoint. I begun to see ways in which he could win which weren’t really there, all I had to do was to delay pushing my pawns and deal with his first. Instead, I chose to take the risky option and charge forward and missed his winning idea. I made the mistake of trading pawns but instead of taking back, he pushed his pawn to g6 which would mean he would queen his pawn with check. This position was drawable but I’d already conceded that the game was completely lost.  I resigned after 49 moves ending the tournament on 3.5/5 .

Overall I was fairly disappointed with how the tournament ended but on the positive side I’ve won more matches in this tournament than matches I’ve won in the last three months. I think the lesson I’ve learnt is from Henry James Bryon.

Life is too short for chess.