Hampshire Individual Chess Championship 2022

One of the reasons for adding these posts on the Hampshire Individual Chess Championships is that the historic championships have little information on them. The 1930 tournaments had details in the newspapers, but for the latter ones this was not the case (or they have not been added to the British Newspapers Archive yet). Some information is included in the Hampshire Archives, but this is hit and miss depending on what was recorded in the AGM or Council minutes at the time.

It is unlikely that much would have been recorded in the Chess publications of the time, as these concentrate on tournaments with the top players, National championships etc. County championships are normally made up of strong local amateur players, improving juniors who may go on to become titled players and club players pitting their wits against the stronger players. Reporting on these tournaments will hopefully bring back memories of chess at these periods either to people who knew some of the players, or who had played in later Hampshire Individual Championships.

Although the 2022 tournament can only be stated as Chess History by the smallest of margins, in 10 years time this will not be the case and as I have found with my original lost articles on the ones from 20 years ago (now mostly restored as kindly provided by others) it is good to have something available for anyone interested in Hampshire Chess history.

The chess databases I have, do not have many games from the older tournaments, but some have been made available from local players such as Arthur Brameld for the Wilf Pratten games and the latter Hampshire Congresses (and some from when I entered the games from the early 2000 period). I am looking for more games from these Championship’s and if any readers have them please do send me copies.

Round 1
Round 2
Round 3
Round 4
Round 5
Round 6

Final Table
Games
Gallery
HCA Secretary Report
Acknowledgements and sources

The Hampshire Congress incorporating the Hampshire Individual Chess Championship was held at Lysess Hotel in Fareham 4th November to 6th November 2022.

The Hampshire Chess Secretary’s report on the championship stated:

We have a new county champion. Iwan Cave (Chandlers Ford) won the Silver Rook on tie-break from Roland Bezuidenhout (Fareham) – it was a very close decision. Iwan is not yet 16 and only started playing chess 4 years ago!
John Wheeler

The picture above shows first place winner of the Championship Open Oliver Gill (who was not eligible for the Hampshire Individual Championship), being presented with first place prize by Hampshire Chess President David Nelson.

Luckily Keven Lamb was there to take photographs which always adds to these articles.

Alongside the Open there were Major and Minor tournaments and these will be covered in future posts.

For a list of the winners of the Hampshire Individual Championship and links to any articles I have written the table on the Hampshire Individual Championship is the best place to look. In addition, the table on the Hampshire Tournaments will detail these and any other tournament articles I have completed. Both of these are available from the menu at the top of the site as well.

Round 1

It is difficult task trying to organise the Hampshire Congress, specifically with the Open. The total numbers of the three tournaments was 97, but there were only 8 entries in the Open. This is something which will be discussed by the Hampshire committee, as trying to get a more even balance of numbers for the three tournaments would be beneficial.

The top seed was Fareham’s Roland Bezuidenhout who had a rating more than 100 points higher than Oliver Gill and 200 greater than anyone else. In the first round he was held to a draw by 15 year old Iwan Cave of Chandlers Ford. A dubious temporary sacrifice by Iwan from a level position gave the higher rated player the opportunity to get an advantage, but excellent play saw the draw saved.

This game would turn out to be extremely important in deciding the Hampshire Individual Championship at the end of the tournament.

We catch up with the game from move 26 when a check would have given a winning position to White. In the final position I think White may have been in a bit of time trouble, as he still had a small advantage when the draw was agreed. An excellent result from Iwan, drawing with the top seed with Black.

Paul Northcott held the experienced Welsh player Nigel Saunders to a 60 move draw playing the Grob! The other two games were won by the higher rated players.

Player	Grade	Result	Player	Grade	Result
R Bezuidenhout	2349	½	I Cave	2005	½
G Forbes	1937	0	O Gill	2228	1
D Pye	2139	1	R Johnson	1909	0
P Northcott	1901	½	WN Saunders	2134	½

Round 2

The top board game between Oliver Gill and David Pye was an unusual line in the French and after a complicated opening Black sacrificed a piece, which White returned a couple of moves later. Finally White sacrificed his Knight which allowed perpetual checks to share the point e.g. Qa6+, Kd7, Qb5+, Kd6.

Gill v Pye

The top seed had a great win on the Black side of French Tarrasch. We pick the game up after move 19 when White played the incorrect Ng5 allowing the Black pawns to push through which soon won material.

On the other two boards, Iwan Cave beat Paul Northcott in 21 moves whilst Richard Johnson and Gary Forbes was a short 16 move draw.

Player	Grade	Result	Player	Grade	Result
O Gill	2228	½	D Pye	2139	½
WN Saunders	2134	0	R Bezuidenhout	2349	1
I Cave	2005	1	P Northcott	1901	0
R Johnson	1909	½	G Forbes	1937	½

Round 3

Oliver Gill played an excellent game to beat the top seed with Black. I am not going to pretend I can analyse this game correctly but have added light comments to the game.

I had a quick chat with Iwan before this round and lent him my phone so he could check on David Pye’s games. He mentioned the line David plays against the Sicilian but obviously decided to play his favoured Nimzowitsch defence instead. David decided to first sacrifice a pawn and then a piece.

As is common in these types of positions Black was probably slightly better, but one wrong move can turn an ok position to a losing one. This was the case after 12 .. Bxe6 when Black’s position collapsed. An incorrect continuation by White did allow Black to get back into the game, but it was a very complicated position.

Nigel Saunders beat Gary Forbes in 61 moves whilst Richard Johnson was probably slightly better against Paul Northcott but played one wrong move and was checkmated in a couple of moves. From what I saw of Johnson’s games he looked to be a bit of a time trouble addict which certainly seemed to be one of the reasons for this loss?

Player	Grade	Result	Player	Grade	Result
R Bezuidenhout	2349	0	O Gill	2228	1
D Pye	2139	1	I Cave	2005	0
G Forbes	1937	0	WN Saunders	2134	1
P Northcott	1901	1	R Johnson	1909	0

Round 4

A number of the players were down to take the bye in round four, which left a slight challenge with the pairings. In the end the top seed Roland Bezuidenhout who was on one and half points from three games was given the point bye whilst Nigel Saunders and Iwan Cave who were also on the same score played the only game in the open for round four.

Roland had already played Cave and Saunders so this was the only pairing.

Iwan played an attractive game to beat the higher rated Nigel Saunders to continue his fantastic tournament, going into day three with two and a half points from his four games. This was half a point behind the two leaders Oliver Gill and David Pye who had a bye in round four. Roland was on two and half points as well.

Iwan has annotated this game for the website.

Player	Grade	Result	Player	Grade	Result
WN Saunders	2134	0	I Cave	2005	1
R Bezuidenhout	2349	1	Controller bye
O Gill	2228	½	Bye
D Pye	2139	½	Bye
P Northcott	1901	½	Bye
G Forbes	1937	½	Bye
R Johnson	1909	½	Bye

Round 5

Sunday morning and with two rounds to go it was going to be a close finish. David Pye and Oliver Gill being half a point ahead were now favourites, although Roland Bezuidenhout and Iwan Cave were certainly not out of the hunt.

Oliver Gill agreed to a draw against Iwan Cave after 16 moves in the following position when White has just accepted a pawn sacrifice. The position actually looks quite promising for Black, although very early stages.

David Pye and Roland Bezuidenhout also drew, although this was from perpetual check when Black had at some stage a nice advantage. The game between Paul Northcott and Garry Forbes was also a draw, with a Rook and Pawn ending which the computer gives as 0.00 in the final position.

The final game between Richard Johnson and Nigel Saunders was fairly even, but White made a small inaccuracy and then a larger one which allowed him to bring home the full point.

Player	Grade	Result	Player	Grade	Result
I Cave	2005	½	O Gill	2228	½
D Pye	2139	½	R Bezuidenhout	2349	½
P Northcott	1901	½	G Forbes	1937	½
R Johnson	1909	0	WN Saunders	2134	1

Round 6

The results from round five meant that going into the last round Oliver Gill and David Pye were in the lead with three and a half points whilst Roland Bezuidenhout and Iwan Cave were half a point behind. With regards to the Hampshire Championship title despite previously playing for Southampton Chess Club Oliver Gill was not eligible, as no longer plays for a club in Hampshire.

David Pye had a worse position against Nigel Saunders but this turned critical when he took the c pawn which opened up his King, and despite the complications which followed he could not avoid going into a worse ending, which White converted. This must have been a disappointing loss for David, as a draw would have guaranteed the Hampshire Individual Championship, although the Congress win would be dependant on the Oliver Gill result.

After cornering Oliver at the 4NCL where we both played for Wessex (at opposite ends on the team!) I mentioned the history of asking tournament winners to annotate one of their games. He kindly agreed to this and supplied his win from this round which ensured he won the tournament.

I do like to see the players annotations of their games, as their views on the game is much better and personal than someone who was not closely involved in the game, and I of course rely heavily on Stockfish’s help for the brief annotations I add.

With this win and David’s loss the meant Oliver Gill had won the Hampshire Congress with four and half points from six games. Congratulations to Oliver on winning the Hampshire Congress, he was the only undefeated player in the tournament and his win against top seed Roland Bezuidenhout was key to the achievement.

Roland Bezuidenhout game against Richard Johnson had a King side attack which in the final position Black could have sacrificed the exchange and tried to struggle on, but being the final round he probably had had enough and threw in the towel.

This left Iwan Cave trying to beat Garry Forbes to tie Roland and determine who would be the Hampshire Champion. This was a double edged position and both players (Garry especially) had used a lot of time and were in time trouble after 20 moves or so. Iwan played a pawn move which looked to win tactically but the computer refutes this. Trying to spot this in time trouble would have been extremely difficult though.

With this win Iwan tied Roland on four points from six games and it would be down to the tie-break as to who would win the Hampshire Championship. This took a long time to sort out, as the criteria for this was:

TIES: In the event of ties, prize money will be divided equally. Titles and trophies will be decided by the following tie-break system, in order of priority:

The result(s) between the players involved in the tie, provided they have all met
Sum of Progressive Scores
Sum of Opponents’ Scores
Sonneborn-Berger Scores

I will let you work this out, but basically as I understand it, it came down to the fact that Roland had the one point bye in round four, which meant that Iwan was awarded the Hampshire Individual Chess Championship. As per John Wheeler’s report Iwan is the youngest Hampshire Individual Champion and has a great chess career ahead of him.

We are very pleased to have him on top board for Chandler’s Ford Chess club and a lot of members are wishing they played him initially as there may have been a chance of beating him? The window on this has probably closed for most of us!

I did look back to determine other young winners of the Hampshire Individual and these include the following:

Graham Powell Britton 1931 – Age 18
Seth Saverymuttu 1969 / 1970 – Age 18
Clive Cubitt – 1971 – Age 19? (Not sure, but Clive was BCF Under 18 champion in 1969 which would be consistent)
Jonathan Goddard 1985 – Age 17 (worked out from details on Fareham Chess Club History)
Peter Williams – 2011 – Age 16 (born 1996) – Picture on FIDE profile has the Silver Rook

A number of young winners of the Championship, but Iwan seems to have been the youngest as Peter Williams was 16 when he won.

Player	Grade	Result	Player	Grade	Result
WN Saunders	2134	1	D Pye	2139	0
O Gill	2228	1	P Northcott	1901	0
R Bezuidenhout	2349	1	R Johnson	1909	0
R Johnson	1909	0	I Cave	2005	1

Final Table

As the basis of the final table is from the ECF files the rankings do not match the final real positions. But to amend this I would have to recreate the numbers for each player, which I have not done. But the table can be sorted to allow you to do this.

No.	Name	Grade	Rd 1	Rd 2	Rd 3	Rd 4	Rd 5	Rd 6	Score
1	Iwan Cave	2005	4=	6+	5–	3+	2=	7+	4
2	Oliver Gill	2228	7+	5=	4+	bye =	1=	6+	4½
3	WN Saunders	2134	6=	4–	7+	1–	8+	5+	3½
4	R Bezuidenhout	2349	1=	3+	2–	bye +	5=	8+	4
5	David E Pye	2139	8+	2=	1+	bye =	4=	3–	3½
6	Paul Northcott	1901	3=	1–	8+	bye =	7=	2–	2½
7	Garry Forbes	1937	2–	8=	3–	bye =	6=	1–	1½
8	RJ Johnson	1909	5–	7=	6–	bye =	3–	4–	1

Games

The games from the Congress were entered by Arthur Brameld and can be played through and downloaded here.

With regards to the John Dunleavy prize for the best game, this year this was won by an Open player. Nigel Saunders was the winner with his 5th round win against Richard Johnson, which is available on the HCA Website and does include a very nice Queen sacrifice.