It was a rare treat to be able to play a chess tournament at the fine London venue of Simpson’s In The Strand (and to enjoy the food there throughout the tournament).The first quarter of the six round event went terribly for me. A loss with the white pieces, which at the time seemed completely effortless, to Danny King in the first round was followed by a disastrous opening against Jovanka Houska in the second round. I messed about and she smashed open the centre…Things looked grim. Somehow the worm turned at some point in this game. I managed to get some counterplay after the move …g5 and later won a cute knight endgame. I did not lose again for the rest of the tournament and managed a somewhat more convincing (emphatic even) win against Jovanka in the return game.
Danny King won the event, on tie-break from Jon Speelman with 4 points. I was third with 3.5. I lacked the energy and guts to have a go at ‘Spess’ (Jon Speelman) in the last round with black when a win would have guaranteed me first place (possibly shared - King was by no means winning against Houska at that stage). Jovanka finished on ½ out of 6 which sounds awful but was only a couple of bad moves away from a par score. My tournament performance rating was around 2540 which was pretty good, especially after losing the first round. I suspect I played the first quarter of the event at around 2200 and the rest at over 2600.
The tournament has a website with games and full details:
http://www.howardstaunton.com/hsmt2004/index.htmlTinni and I have been busy creating a website for the Staunton Society and you can see it here:
http://www.howardstaunton.com/I learnt quite a lot about Howard Staunton in preparing the site and he certainly is an impressive chap. Indeed I would say he was a genius ahead of his time in terms of his modern opening play, chess strength and his views on education. - and there is more too, but those are the fields in which I feel qualified to judge. I seem to have joined the Staunton fan club along with his other big fans, Ray Keene, Barry Martin and Clive Davey (the society treasurer who has a major collection of Staunton memorabilia).
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