The Basildon Concord Rotary Club sponsored the first Stanford Trophy event, for Girls' under 11 teams. Teams from Kent and Sussex visited the Ghyllgrove School, Basildon and prepared to do battle with two teams from Essex.
The competition was fairly unusual for Junior Chess in that it was a straight head-to-head, with teams in direct competition. Normally in Junior eents, too many teams take part for this to be a viable option, but with four teams and three rounds this was the obvious choice. It had been agreed amongst the team managers that the two Essex sides would meet in round 1 and that the two winners of the first matches would avoid playing one another until round 3.
Essex had decided at the outset to attempt to ensure that their teams were approximately of equal strength. However, when the two sides met in round 1 the score of 8½-1½, Kathryn Finnis being the solitary winner for Essex B, to Essex A made it appear that object of this exercise had not been met. With Kent winning 8 - 2 against Sussex, there was now little doubt who the two strongest sides were.
Now Kent played Essex B, and this was another one-sided match in which the sole winner for the B team was Laura Malbon, who performed excellently to deal with the Kent board 1. Laura, playing white, queened a pawn as part of a middlegame attack and then dragged the black king into her own half of the board before despatching him, black's own queen and rooks inactive observers. Essex A's match against Sussex was rather closer as Sussex won the top half 3 - 2 but could only manage a solitary draw in the botton half. Irena Klimach, Elizabeth Fletcher, Vernisha Roach, Rosie Lynam, Laura Hough and Caoimhe Murphy all made it to 2 / 2.
Sussex beat Essex B 6½-3½ to take third place, the winners for Essex being Melissa Hirst-Jones and Natasha Stone while Stephanie Gover, Samantha Irvine and Tabitha Sykes all drew. Stephanie was a little unfortunate as, having reached an ending with R, B & 2 v R, B & 2 firstly she demonstrated that she understood how to shepherd pawns home with her king and then offered a rook, which White dared no accept, because a new queen would be the result. Eventually White was forced to give up both her pieces to stop the black pawns but then, having done all the hard work, Stephanie delivered stalemate.
In the battle for first place, the match was for a long time too close to call. Simone Webb had estabished a very promising position on the top board and even after her queen disappeared she still had a material advantage and some excellent attacking chances as her two rooks and two bishops were considerably better than White's queen and rook. Simone also had some extra pawns but never quite got to grips with the problem of how to break down the stubbornly defended white king. Repeated attempts to make inroads into his position left her own king unguarded and eventually, after a long sequence of checks by White, in which a couple of mating opportunities went by the wayside, she found a check which picked up one of the rooks. This was the result which eventually clinched the match for Kent, although Elizabeth Fletcher's prolonged rearguard action against the prodigiously talented Soriah Williams was unable to prevent the addition of a further point to the Kent score. Earlier, Alex Stribling had ripped into Jia Ping Lee's defences only to see her advantage disappear with her queen.
So eventually this resulted in a well-deserved victory for the Kent side. David Willis, the President of the Basildon Concord Roatary Club, declared his organisation's willingness to sponsor the event again next year, and also to add an under-14 event, probably over 6 boards, to run alongside the under-11.
While the main event was going on, a problem-solving competition was run throughout the day. There were 6 problems which were generally much to difficult, but nevertheless one competitor found most of the right answers. This was Soriah Williams' father so eventually three prizes were awarded: a bag of mints to Mr. Williams, a bag of jelly babies to the runner-up amongst the competitors, which went to Abigail Friar, and a box of chocolates to Kimberley Hirst-Jones.
|
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The problem-solving competition comprised the following positions:-
|
|
|
|
| White mates in 2 | White mates in 2 | White mates in 3 |
|
|
|
|
| White mates in 8 | White to play and win | White to play and win |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|