Just beyond the halfway point of the tournament we now have two joint leaders on 4½/5: IM Conor Murphy and CM Stanley Badacsonyi. They haven't yet met, and won't do so in round six as the youngster from North London is taking a half-point bye in that round. In third place is Polish FM Maciej Czopor on 4/5 while a further seven players have 3½.
ROUND FOUR
After all those things I wrote in my last report about the absence of quick draws, etc, the round four top board game between Maciej Czopor and Conor Murphy ended in a draw in 15 moves. This coincided with the fact that I was late in arriving. Consequently I failed in my photographic duties and missed the chance to snap them...
As King Charles I said, "I see the birds have flown."
TS Venkataramanan vs Stanley Badacsonyi: an entertaining scrap.
And on the next board, in-form Bob Eames overcame Mike Healey
That left the third of the three leaders, Stanley Badacsonyi to battle it out against T S Venkataramanan and he did so successfully to wrest the sole lead with 4/4. It was great fight, reflecting credit on both players.
Bob Eames won his third game in a row, beating Mike Healey. Black chose to decline a Morra Gambit but soon came to regret it as White created something resembling a Maroczy Bind, followed by a powerful queenside pawn storm.
All gambit pawns gratefully accepted: Jem Gurner beat Peter Lalic
The Malaysian FM Zhuo Ren Lim had a good win against Matthew Dignam after tempting his opponent into accepting an unusual counter-gambit against a c3 Sicilian. Alex Browning also won when his kingside attack crashed through against Supratit Banerjee. Elis Denele Dicen found herself ground down in a long rook and pawns endgame by Tom Villiers. Peter Lalic was another Morra Gambiteer, but his gift was accepted by Jem Gurner, who also gratefully annexed a second and then a third. Lalic reduced the deficit from three to one but at the cost of ruining his position.
Ewan Wilson was two pawns up with a good chance of winning but the capture of a third saw him facing (Kenneth) Hobson's choice...
Zain Patel won a tricky endgame in round four
Zain Patel won against Edmond Andal after the Philippines player missed a saving move in a rook and pawns endgame.
ROUND FIVE
Stanley Badacsonyi put up a tough rearguard to preserve his lead, now shared with Conor Murphy
In round five the leader, Stanley Badacsonyi, found himself paired with the number three seed FM Maciej Czopor. White opened with something I've not seen before - 1 d4 Nf6 2 Nc3 d5 3 Bf4 e6 4 Nb5!? - but that might be because my chess knowledge, such as it is, is firmly rooted in the 20th century, before he was born. It didn't work out particularly well and White's slow development led to some problems along the e-file which he could only meet by surrendering the right to castle. However, Czopor's advantage was dissipated by an ill-judged queen exchange and he was unable to dominate the ensuing double rook ending in the way that he might have expected. Badacsonyi's recovery after mishandling the opening show he is a tough fighter.
Murphy-Eames was a long struggle which the Irish IM finally won
That left last year's winner IM Conor Murphy with the task of defeating Bob Eames with White to tie with Badacsonyi for the lead. Eames defended a Benkö Gambit. Murphy sacrificed the exchange for a pawn, making two in total with the addition of the traditional Benkö pawn. Stockfish was unimpressed, judging the position to be level but, as is so often the case, the practicalities of the position told a different story, with Black being faced with a series of difficult defensive problems while the white king remained safely out of harm's way. That said, Eames coped with most of them extremely well, before stumbling over the final question posed by the relentless Irish examiner.
The highlight of the afternoon for me was not one of the games but a pleasant chat with one of the player's coaches who was present at the venue. Here's his photo...
Zhang Pengxiang is in Kingston as coach to Jack Liu - but take a look at his chess CV below...
Zhang Pengxiang is a 44-year-old Chinese grandmaster, who is currently rated 2567 but with a peak rating of 2657. He is less active as a player these days, concentrating on his work as a chess coach, but his chess CV includes some awesome achievements. In 2001 he qualified for the FIDE World Championship in Moscow when the format was knock-out matches of two classical games followed by rapid and blitz tie-breakers. In the first round he drew the two classical games but won both the subsequent rapidplay games to eliminate his opponent... who was Anatoly Karpov. It's worth reading the description of this extraordinary achievement on his Wikipedia page.
Zhang has played in Britain twice before. In 2007 he was part of the powerful Chinese team which overcame the British team in a match-tournament held in Liverpool. His results on that occasion were wins against Mickey Adams, Jonathan Rowson and Nick Pert, draws with Nigel Short and Gawain Jones, and a solitary loss to David Howell, for a rating performance in excess of 2700. More recently he was invited to play in the 2023/24 Hastings Masters by tournament director Stuart Conquest and finished 2nd to Abhijeet Gupta with an unbeaten 7/9.
Zhang has a charmingly modest demeanour and it was a real privilege to chat with him. And how great for young players like Jack Liu that they get the opportunity to learn from him.
On that upbeat note I shall close this report for now - it's gone 1am in the morning and I'm an old gent who needs his sleep. But I might add a few more observations tomorrow.
Round six starts at 1000 BST on Thursday 15 August, with round seven at 1530 the same day. Follow the action live at Lichess.org and find the latest results at chess-results.com. Also look out for me on X/Twitter for regular comments - @johnchess - and also @KingstonChess.
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