A day out at Livingston: Sam Cornwell at the Allegro

After the success of the Glasgow Congress a few weeks ago, in which several Selkirk players attended, I had the bug to go and play more chess against people from around Scotland. I saw that an Allegro tournament was taking place in Livingston this weekend, signed up, and took myself there for the day.

These days I don’t really think of myself as someone who enjoys fastplay tournaments, but I convinced myself that with the time control being 20 minutes plus 10 seconds per move, we’d still be looking at games of around 50 minutes or so. Over five rounds, that felt manageable enough.

I had never played a rated Allegro event before, although Chess Scotland does apparently think I have an Allegro rating of 1241, which placed me as 16th seed in the tournament. That felt a little high to me, if I’m honest. I entered the Intermediate section, which was for players under 1600.

I travelled up on my own and, over the last week, had prepared by playing blitz games on the new Take Take Take app, which I thoroughly recommend people download. It’s fantastic.

I arrived early enough to treat myself to a lovely breakfast before the chess started, then went to inspect the pairings. My first round opponent was 7 year old Shourya Konjeti, rated 704, which on paper should really have been a straightforward enough start. But as many will know, these young children are getting frighteningly good at chess, and their ratings don’t always reflect how strong they actually are. That certainly proved to be the case here.

I felt he played very soundly and dealt with my Sicilian with ease. The game ended quite dramatically, with a rook and queen battering ram down the h-file and staring at what I thought was certain mate. I resigned, shook his hand, and he was absolutely delighted.

Only afterwards, when I reviewed the game from my notes, did I realise that I had missed a very simple escape: a push of the f-pawn would have got me out of trouble. In fact, the engine showed me as something like +8 at the time. Quite hilariously, I had resigned in a completely winning position. (see final position in game 1)

Still, fair is fair. If I didn’t see the move, I didn’t see the move. I spoke to Shourya and his father afterwards and we went through the game together. I told him he had played exceedingly well, which he had, and that the win was a fair one. The escape route may have existed, but I hadn’t found it. The game is attached to this report for anyone who wants to have a look.

The immediate consequence of losing round one to a 704 rated 7 year old was that I then found myself paired against lower-rated non-winners in rounds two and three. That is exactly what happened, and it brought me games against Arin Karnik, rated 998, and Sohrab Valizadeh, who was unrated. I won the second game in unusual circumstances after my opponent made two illegal moves, and I then won the third as well, which meant I went into round four on 2/3.

Round four then produced the top seed in the section, Joe Galbraith, rated 1580, and I found myself on board four, intimidated and expecting to lose. I sat down with the white pieces, put my best concentrating brain on, and got stuck in.

It turned into quite a fantastic game. I opened with my usual London, and at one stage Black found what looked like a brilliant breakthrough: first a rook sacrifice and then a knight sacrifice (see moves 21 & 24 in game 4), both of which seemed to swing the game firmly in his favour and really should have finished me off. Somehow, though, he couldn’t quite find the way through. My connected rooks and queen became very active, and in the end it was Joe’s hand that came across the board in resignation. My best ever result!

That win took me to 3/4 going into the final round.

In round five I defended with the Sicilian again, this time against Lucas Alvarez Garcia de Sola, rated 1354, who was very clearly a capable young player. Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t tempt him into anything silly, and once he got the upper hand he never really let go. I am slightly embarrassed to admit that I played all the way to mate, partly to get my money’s worth and partly to make sure he had to work for it. I did feel there was a sliver of hope a draw could be found, but no.

So I finished the day with a final score of L W W W L, ending up in 15th place, which is actually one place above my original seeding. On paper, that probably counts as a respectable result, and I was pleased enough with it. More than that, I was happy to be there representing Selkirk on my day out, and I hope a few other club members might fancy joining me at these events in future.

The main spectacle of the day, of course, was my resignation in a +8 winning position against young Shourya. But let’s be fair: if I had seen the escape route, I would have played it. I didn’t. So the result stands, and the lesson is obvious enough.

Note: the notations from game two and game five are incomplete because I got myself into time trouble and decided my time was better spent on the games than on writing moves down.