Gothenburg Round 1

Well folks, its a flying start for the boys as Wales get off to a 0½ - 3½ loss .... but what a 0½ ! He could've won in fact, but Richard declined to play on with R&4 vs R&3 against former World No.2 Viktor Korchnoi !

Old Vik may be a bit past his best nowadays and his grading has slipped down to 'only' 2615 but even still ... this must remain a result for the all-time Welsh Hall of Fame ?

We're the 39th seeds out of 40 Men's teams with only Cyprus below us and Ireland and Scotland a few places higher. The difference between us and 38th place (Luxemburg) is over 100 points per board ! England are 18th seeds.

For round 1 we drew Switzerland and the official scorecard read (Wales White on odds):

1.19 39 Wales ½ - 3½ 19 Switzerland

1 FM Jones Richard 2325  ½ : ½ GM Korchnoi Viktor 2615

2 FM James David 2213     0 : 1 GM Gallagher Joseph 2544

3 Trevelyan John 2196  0 : 1 GM Jenni Florian 2494

4 Spice Alan 2175    0 : 1 IM Hug Werner 2445

Preparation went really well with Richard spending all morning analysing the French lines that Korchnoi usually plays only to get to the board and meet 1...c5 after his usual 1.e4. A Taimanov variation followed with the well-known Bf4-e3-g5 manoeuvre and W establishing a N on d5. In other respects though the position wasn't going brilliantly and Korchnoi seemed to be slowly getting on top. ...Rc8 somewhere around 25 was a mistake though (Richard thinks ...Rb8 was winning - watch for the game score soon).

After that Korchnoi seemed to lose the plot a bit and Richard went from accurate grovelling to confident equality to a pawn up between there and move 40 as we (and dozens of spectators) watched in amazement. It was great to watch the body language as Richard started to realise he was getting on top and Korchnoi started to bash out the moves and the clock in very surly, ungracious fashion !

In the end Richard could've settled down for a long night of probing but he accepted that the GM has probably played hundreds of these endings before and it was better to save his strength for the rounds to come. Or as Richard himself put it much more succintly "I'm just a lazy bugger" !

None of the others went down without a fight and I was very hopeful of another result for quite a while.

David stuck to his usual Najdorf Sicilian against a guy who's written books on how to beat it ! He held on the longest of all but was probably always slightly worse.

John very sensibly played the Exchange variation against the Ruy Lopez and seemed to be OK up to about move 20. He didn't quite get anything nailed down enough though and gradually Black was able to expand with his Q-side pawns and keep things fluid enough for his Bishops to take control.

Alan played the World Junior champion from about 1970 and didn't really manage to get to grips with his opponents unorthodox anti-Dutch system. A classical system initially turned into a kind of Stonewall with dark-squared B's off and K's castled on opposite wings. Once the game opened up Alan fought off the attack with some resourceful tactics but the endgame was always losing.