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Witney's Jake Holton wins British U14 title
The British Chess
Championships 2015 were held at the University
of Warwick, incidentally where my parents both
went to university. Before the U14 competition
came the U15, which I suppose was an overall
success: 74 FIDE points won, largely thanks to
beating the second and fourth seeds, but some
bad games, blundering an exchange then
collapsing the game after as a result. I managed
to finish with two wins, giving me 4/7 points.
The last, and my favourite of the whole two
weeks, was a local triumph against Oscar Idle:
The U14s started with, as in
the U15s, a match against the second seed.
Unlike the previous tournament, I threw away an
easy win, as I did again in round 4. I had to
escape with a draw second round against lower
rated opposition, but redeemed myself partially
by beating Daniel Varney (my third opponent from
Oxfordshire) the round after. That put me on
2½/4 – it didn’t look likely I could win the
tournament from here! My laptop managed to break
at this point, limiting preparation greatly for
me – fate, perhaps? After a routine win as
white, I played a nice game as black against
higher rated opposition:
Then came the last game. I
was playing the sole leader (5/6), as white,
while the other two players on 4.5 (like me)
played on Board 2. To both of our delights, it
was a quick draw: meaning a draw would be good
enough for him to win the tournament outright,
while a win for me would mean the same. Having
the psychological edge, I managed a good
position, but inaccurate play on my part meant
it only translated to a queen endgame
(particularly proud about the king march
finishing with Qe5, meaning if he moved his
queen my king moves away with check and then
checkmate). Apologies for the lack of annotation
here, I haven’t had a chance to analyse this
one:
2015 British Under 14 Final Standings |
Download 98 games in PGN |
Full Prizewinners' list 2015 |
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