The British Chess Magazine
513
The Shock of the New
Theo Slade
theoslade@live co uk
Adventures in China
An email out of the blue,
a phone call from the ECF
Junior Director and before
I knew it I was flying out of
Heathrow and into Chongqing, China, representing
England in the World U16 Olympiad. The
England team comprised five players, captained by Roy Zhang and coached by IM
Adam Hunt. I was technically the reserve,
but all players played their part in securing
a mid-table finish of 10/20 (34th–35th/72).
For the first two nights, we stayed at the
Sofitel – a very glamorous five star hotel.
The food was amazing and everyone was
trying to be helpful, even if they couldn’t
speak English. After this we stayed at Yucai Middle School, where the event took
place. All of the food and drink was free and
the tournament as a whole was extremely
well organised. We even had our own team
guide, Kirsty, who picked us up before every game and made sure that we knew what
was going on. The biggest inconvenience
was the fact that our room was on the 6th
floor and there was no lift(!), meaning that
we had to climb around 7,000 steps during
the trip.
As for the tournament itself, there were a
lot of strong Chinese teams that entered at
the last minute. We were all slightly disappointed by this, as the only other country
we played was Indonesia. Moreover, the
majority of the Chinese players were not
rated and therefore we couldn’t prepare
against them. As for me, I was very pleased
with how often I was selected to play, and
I managed to score 5.5/8 from my games.
Here’s one of Roy’s best games:
G R Zhang
O B Yanyan
King’s Indian, Smyslov E61
[Slade]
1 d4 f6 2 f3 g6 3 c4 g7 4 c3 0–0 5
g5 h6
It seems that 5…c5 is the main line and after
6 d5 Black has a choice of moves: 6…d6, 6…
b5 or 6… h6.
6 h4 d6 7 e3 bd7 8 e2 c6 9 0–0 g5 10
g3 h5 11 d2 ×g3 12 h×g3 e5 13
d×e5 d×e5?!
XIIIIIIIIY
9r+lwq-trk+0
9zpp+n+pvl-0
9-+p+-+-zp0
9+-+-zp-zp-0
9-+P+-+-+0
9+-sN-zP-zP-0
9PzP-sNLzPP+0
9tR-+Q+RmK-0
xiiiiiiiiy
It seems to me that this recapture hands White
a small advantage. The bishop on g7 looks
clumsily placed and one of the white knights
is ready to come to e4. Also, Black hasn’t developed his queenside pieces as yet.
After 13…×e5?! 14 de4! the d6 pawn is
becoming increasingly weak.