All posts by Neil Berry

Boris Spassky, 10th World Champion, had a highly developed feel for the initiative and produced many sharp attacking masterpieces. Current and 16th World Champion Magnus Carlsen is more known for squeezing the maximum from apparently lifeless positions but has recently taken his game to a new level with a series of astonishing attacking games. Is the influence of Alpha Zero making an impact to elite level chess?

This training event will cover typical attacking themes that should be known and how the initiative needs to be developed or lost. It is intended to provide an arsenal of attacking plans that can be incorporated into your own games.

Designed to support a wide range of abilities from club players up to titled level. Important examples to remember will be shown by the trainer followed by participants putting what they have learnt into practice e.g. by solving exercises and playing positions.

Former Scottish Champion Jonathan Grant, FIDE Trainer, will run the session in conjunction with Edinburgh Chess Club.

Entry: The fee, whether attending one or more sessions, is £49 for adults and £35 for juniors (U18).

Venue: Edinburgh Chess Club, 1 Alva Street, EDINBURGH EH2 4PH

Schedule: Saturday 8 June 2019 1:00 pm – 6:00 pm and Sunday 9 June 2019 1:00 pm – 6:00 pm

Entry and contact: Neil Berry E-mail: thebalernobull@hotmail.com Phone: 07810-765-98

Use your Initiative! Training event 8_9 Jun 2019

Edinburgh 1 retained the Edinburgh League Premier League title this season. Our final tally of 6 wins, 3 draws and 1 defeat illustrates that this season the league was very competitive, with all teams capable of taking points off each other. Congratulations to the squad of Neil Berry, Hugh Brechin, Andrew Green, Paul Roberts, Graeme Kafka, Petros Wallden, David Sime, Calum MacQueen, Willie Rutherford and Andre Antunes!

On Tuesday 19th March Candidate Master Andrew Green gave a talk to the club members. Andrew works as a full time chess coach, and has lots of experience in coaching many Scottish junior internationalists.

Andrew explained a few topics with great clarity. He gave a simple method of evaluating positions (MAPS – material, activity, pawn structure, space), and explained the “Capablanca rule” of how to use your pawns to play against the enemy Bishop. This isn’t a particularly well known concept, and made an impression on me as I had recently seen the same idea in a Chess24 video from GM Laurent Fressinet:

This position comes from 2 computer games, Stockfish against Google’s Alpha Zero, famous for getting its strength from purely playing against itself millions of times. Alpha Zero has “taught” itself Capablanca’s rule, and was able to restrict the dark squared bishop by 1…f6! 2.c3 g5! 3.Bd2 a5!, and Black is fine.

Today was the last match of the SNCL. The first team had a slim chance of the title, but we had to defeat the leaders Dundee City A and hope other results went our way. Unfortunately a strong Dundee team defeated us 4.5-0.5 to retain the title.

The second team needed to win to secure a top two finish and promotion from division 3. This we did with a 3-2 victory, congratulations to the team!

Thanks to everyone who played this season.

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We played Bon Accord in the Richardson Cup semi final yesterday:

Bon Accord 1.5-6.5 Edinburgh

Murad Abdulla 0-1 Calin Gheorghiu
Hamish Olson 1-0 Neil Berry
Daniel Maxwell 0-1 Calum MacQueen
Euan Gray 0-1 Petros Wallden
Richard Jennings 0-1 Andrew Green
Jeremy Mitchell 0-1 Alastair White
Mike Cavanagh draw David Sime
Kylan Kante 0-1 Raj Bhopal

An excellent result! Thanks to Keith Rose of Castehill for hosting us. The other semi final between Edinburgh West and Phones takes place next Saturday (at the club!). Final is provisionally on Sunday April 14th.