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GamesThis page is available for publishing games. Herts Correspondence IM John Rhodes has selected six games for you to play through.
JOHN RHODES – ICCF INTERNATIONAL MASTER OF CORRESPONDENCE CHESS I was kindly asked to provide a few games for the Hertfordshire Chess Association website and to give an insight into correspondence chess after gaining my title in 2003. For those that do not already know me I am aged 52, married with two daughters and live in Biggleswade, Bedfordshire. I worked in Merchant and Investment Banking for 34 years in the City of London and took early retirement when my bank closed down their money market operations at the end of 2001. (Yes, I did start at 16!) I am currently training for another profession. My other interests include road running and classic cars. OPENING - My late father taught me how to play chess and I remember practising by playing the moves for both sides, well at least I could never lose! Perhaps this was an early form of analysis. The only books I had were those small volumes called Chess Traps and Stratagems and Chess Openings by the Rev. Cunningham , The Game of Chess by Golombek and The Chess Mind by Abrahams. I played in the senior school team and remember being entered into a local lightning tournament, where you had to make each move within five seconds or lose. This I hated and it put me off serious chess for another ten years or so. MIDDLEGAME – In 1977 I saw an article about a forthcoming Hitchin Congress and contacted the late Glynne Jones, who used to organise and control the congress. He could not have been more friendly or helpful, and it just happened that we caught the same train to London everyday. We would regularly play chess on the journey; Glynne would make his moves between reading his Telegraph and still beat me! I bought myself the latest Modern Chess Openings and studied hard before the congress. I played in the Major, lost the first two games, won the third and I am not sure what happened next but that was my start to competitive chess! Anyway, in the next few years I played in congresses at Rugby, Borehamwood, Hammersmith, Stevenage, City of London and Harrow, normally in the Minor, with only moderate scores, ending up with a BCF grade of 125 in 1979. I also played in the lower teams at Stevenage and for the county third team and can remember the late Mr. Woodland giving us some useful chess lessons. I never did manage to win a county tie! I was secretary of Stevenage Chess Club for two years and organised simuls. with IM Mike Basman, at Pin Green, and with Soviet GM Alexander Kotov, at Stevenage in 1979. Kotov played 20 boards, lost one to a youngster, and I think he won most of the others against some of the county’s best players. I will never forget driving him back to London in my Citroen Dyane with him helping me to map read! ENDGAME – In 1979 I moved house from Hitchin to Biggleswade and started to work longer hours. Unfortunately, this meant I had to leave the Stevenage club, so I started playing Correspondence Chess (CC) for the county and I also played in some Friendly International matches for the BPCF. I took my CC games seriously, although I did play some pretty unusual openings at times in the foreign matches. I slowly made my way up the boards for the BPCF, now renamed the BFCC, and was invited to play in a ‘real’ match against Russia, an ‘unfriendly’ match as opposed to a ‘friendly’ match I supposed. I was told that I had to have an ICCF rating to be eligible to play and was sent an e-mail saying it was going to be 2289. I thought this cannot be right and promptly sent a reply saying that they must have made a mistake as I had never been at this kind of level, and how did they calculate it. I was surprised when they said it was correct and was based on my previous ten years results of international matches! If only I had known that my games were being rated, I would not have experimented with as many unusual openings! I was an ardent fan of Hugh Myers and his Openings Bulletin and Mike Basman. In the Russian match I quickly lost both games to a very solid player! Around this time, GM Nigel Davies was offering to analyse games and offering courses, so I decided to enlist his help. He has helped me ever since and without his guidance and constant pressure I would never have made any further progress. Nigel only looks at my completed games, not ones in progress! My rating had reached 2327 in the year 2000 and I had an invite to play in my first CC tournament, the David Lodge Memorial. I was hoping to score 50%, but ended up half a point short with 6.5/14. I had some good games; my win against Santhosh Matthew Paul, in which I played White against the Dragon, was annotated by Mikhail Golubev in Informator 81; I beat CC-IM Heikki Arppi with Black and drew with the eventual winner, CC-SIM Jerry Asquith, a dentist from Ruislip, who gained his IM title in the tournament. I also played in a Latvian Gambit tournament, run by John Elburg, but failed to qualify for the next round. In 2001 my rating reached a peak of 2370 and I played in the first round of the ICCF Email Jubilee tournament, section P178, and took third place in my group with 5.5/9, but only the top two went through to the next round. The start of my next tournament, the Antonio Roura ‘B’ Memorial, was delayed by the terrible events of September 11th and started later in that month. I made steady progress with many draws and a few wins, but it was certainly a roller-coaster ride as to whether I would score enough points for an IM norm and I tried not to think about it and to just concentrate on each game. I left work at the end of 2001 and although I started training for a different career I had more time available for chess! I put my name down for the Email Master Norm Tournament 049, a category 5 event with an average rating of 2350 which started in May, 2002. My rating was now 2331, so I thought a 50% score would be acceptable. I played quickly and scored 6.5/10, finishing joint second, gaining my first IM norm and my first victory over a Russian player! Meanwhile, the Roura ‘B’ was still in progress and I was left with some difficult games. Finally, I had three games to finish and needed to score 2/3 for the 10.5 points required for my last norm and title. One game was certainly only a draw with best play and the others would probably be losses as I was one and two pawns down, and this last game was against Ireland’s latest CC-IM Dave Salter, so I thought that 0.5/3 was the likely outcome. However, in the ‘drawn’ game my opponent let me get my King into a good position and I won, then just after Christmas 2002, I offered Salter a draw as I had finally managed to equalise the position, and in the meantime my other opponent had offered me a draw, which I readily accepted. Salter kept me waiting several days before he accepted, but it was certainly worth the wait and I had an email from George Pyrich, the ICCF Qualifications Commissioner, confirming my title in the first week of 2003. It just goes to show that you should never give up! So I had remained unbeaten in both my qualifying tournaments scoring 8 wins and 18 draws from 26 games. I had to wait for the ICCF Congress in Ostrava in October for my certificate, although I did not attend, and the title will show on the next rating list. Since then I have been playing for the BCCA on board 3 in the Champions League scoring 6.5/10 and in the Andre Giraudet Memorial ‘A’ where my latest score is 3.5/5. I very much enjoy playing in the various Herts. County teams and Graham has done an excellent job in getting us promoted to Division 1! GAMES- Some background to each game on the website. The first against Jacques Derouineau was played in a team match against the IECC and move ten just seemed to jump out at me. The second against Laszlo Kovacs was in my first tournament and I took the position away on holiday and was reading Speelman’s Independent chess column on the beach in Sandsend, North Yorkshire, when I realised that the game, Svidler v Almasi, was following my own! Svidler had won, but my opponent had made improvements, so I contacted Speelman and he was very interested and asked to me to let him know how the game went. I spent many hours and days analysing that game but I was happy with a draw. The third against Mikhail Shchebenyuk was my first victory over any Russian player. All the players I have come across from Russia have always played very solid sensible games; it must be the way they were taught in schools! The game ended in a tactical melee which could probably have gone either way and was another one that burned the midnight oil. The fourth game against Heikki Arrpi was quite exciting and he should have attacked quicker on the Queenside and not let me build up on the Kingside. My 13…g5 was criticised by my trainer, but I think it was a natural move for me! The fifth game (Unfortunately, I originally supplied the wrong game moves to the website, this should start 1.d4 d5 not 1.e4 c5) against Dave Salter was where I followed some theory then realised the position looked horrendous for Black, but it was too late. He failed to finish me off and I ended up two pawns down which he should not have tried to hold onto, as in doing so I managed to slowly get back into the game and finally draw my most important game so far. The last game against Mr.Woodruff was played for a Herts. Team and I think my opponent should have moved one of his centre pawns a little earlier. OTB v CC- I acknowledge that OTB chess is much more difficult than CC and you cannot compare ICCF grades and titles to ELO grades and FIDE titles. OTB players need to know openings from memory, there is always a time limit and you cannot move the pieces about, things which CC players take for granted! I know many OTB players would not want a game to last for years, but if you play by email, a game can be over in as little as a month. I am sure that many OTB players think that to play well at CC you just need to turn on a PC program, well I am afraid that does not really work, you need to be better than a PC program in all areas of the game. A PC program may be useful for tactics but is useless in a blocked position (you only have to look at the last Kasparov v ‘Fritz’ match to see this demonstrated) and it can evaluate a position wrongly. Personally, I do not mind what artificial help my opponents get, as I have been a chess computer enthusiast since well before PCs were invented and belonged to the International Computer Chess Association, so I am fairly well up on how they play! In fact, I like nothing more than to watch programs or machines play each other as I try to guess what is going on! I have had some games published in Selective Search magazine. I do have PC programs but do not trust them for my own CC games. I think OTB players would benefit from playing a few CC games, if only to try out some different openings. MODERN CC PLAYER- A computer of some sort is obviously essential for email CC and for running a database, although you could manage without one if you just played postal games, as I am sure many people do. I tend to change my computer every 3 or 4 years, when they start slowing down or become outdated. It is best to go for one with plenty of memory rather than the latest sound card or graphics. I am sure some players keep fully up to date with every variation of their pet openings by using websites and downloading the latest TWIC games on a regular basis. I am lazy and use some large CD databases and opening books, but I do not maintain an up to the minute database. I occasionally look positions up on online databases, but I am still getting to know my basic openings, let alone the latest fashions. I have heard it said that your chess ability is in inverse proportion to the number of chess books you have, well, my library consists of over 300 books….. so there is little hope for me! My trainer says I should build up my own opening repertoire, which is easier said than done. You must be careful and not trust all analysis as being correct as I have found mistakes in books and databases. Be wary of blindly following won games as their opponent may have missed a winning coup which you do not spot in time. The lesson is to check it for yourself! What you must be prepared to do in some games, is look some 30 or 40 moves or more ahead, when the position warrants it. CC players will know what I mean, and this is normally well out of the reach of even the latest PCs whatever software they are running. This is one way you can get an advantage over someone just relying on a PC program and not planning well enough ahead. I also use a few openings with closed positions and try to build up a slow attack or try and have an unbalanced position that a PC program might not fully appreciate. I am sure that there is a widespread use of PC programs in CC, but beware of relying on them. In some games you just have to make an educated guess, if the variations are many and long. Generally, it is better to go for the simplest continuation if you are ahead and the most complex if you are not, which I am sure is the same as in OTB games. You need to keep good records and be very careful how you write your replies as clerical errors can mean a loss of time or even the game. I believe you can use some psychology, for instance, if your opponent is moving very quickly you can try and lead them into a complex position and hope they make a rash move they might later regret. I normally move quickly, but will grind to a halt if the position warrants it. I have had about 35 games in progress at the same time, which is far too many to give them all the attention they need, so I try and keep it below 20, but this depends on how much time you have available and what stage your games are at. It is sometimes difficult to get the ideal number, especially when you get asked to play, and you will find that you undoubtedly have either too few or too many! I believe anyone can get to a reasonable level if they are prepared to put in some time and effort. I know there are other Herts. CC players out there, some with higher ratings than me, who will sooner or later get their own titles and I wish them every success, and I hope some OTB players may be tempted to have a go as well!
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