Exeter Chess Club:Simultaneous Display P M</em>

Exeter Chess Club

Simultaneous Display Post Mortem

[Index to games at end of page]

Although he obviously knows a lot of theory International Master Gary Lane wasn't out to play right down the line - he deviated in the sharper bits of theory against Mark and Steve. Rather, he played mostly solidly - certainly in only a few games did he set out for mate straight away. His opening repertoire leaned heavily on his published books (Ruy Lopez, Bishop's Opening, Closed Sicilian, Alapin Sicilian) and unpublished ones (Blackmar-Diemer Gambit, which I think no-one accepted).

"When I attacked, I won" he said afterwards: this indicates some need for better defensive technique (Bruce, Daniel, Geoff). On several occasions it seemed he just pushed a queen near an Exeter King's-side, hoping that things would turn up. This 'fishing' for opportunities can be seen in the games with Iain, Geoff and Ivor. Also, there were a couple of games where we seemed to be doing well to start with, but the moment we started mixing it, we fell apart (Sean, Iain). There are a couple of games where GL adopted standard attacking formations, and the attack went like clockwork - my guess is our mistake here was allowing such a formation to start with (Bruce, Tom, Keith).

Masterly judgement was apparent in the games - where after a fair opening, our player's pieces seemed to start going backwards (Geoff) or became decentralised (Iain); when GL was at a clear disadvantage in a game, he cold-bloodedly made the most of his own advantages (Ivor, Steve, Chris).

GL wasn't out to knock us out in the opening, and in most of the games we seemed to be still in the game at move 15. We did best when we played his strategy back at him - kept solid and played good positional chess (Mark, Steve, Gill), kept centralised (Matthew), didn't let him settle with a stable centre (Matthew, Steve), insisted on some play of our own (Iain, Ivor, Steve...) didn't take his word for it (Ivor, Steve, Chris). And I'm sure we were all reassured to watch GL play with a flourish Qe8+ Nxe8 (oops) as he was finishing off little David Butler...

Several folk did well for much of the game, outplaying our esteemed visitor for at least some of the time. This goes some way towards suggesting that masters don't do anything very different to club players, rather they do it more or faster.

GAMES:

  1. "When I attacked, I won..."
    1. Lane,G (IM) - Bruce Rowston
    2. Lane,G (IM) - Daniel Hill
    3. Lane,G (IM) - Keith Atkins
    4. Lane,G (IM) - Tom Forbes
  2. Mixing it...
    1. Lane,G (IM) - Geoff Jenkins
    2. Lane,G (IM) - Sean Pope
  3. Doing better...
    1. Lane,G (IM) - Matthew Leigh
    2. Lane,G (IM) - Iain Taggart
    3. Lane,G (IM) - Mark Blackmore
    4. Lane,G (IM) - Ivor Annetts
    5. Lane,G (IM) - Chris Bellers
    6. Lane,G (IM) - Steve Homer

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Dr. Dave