Oxford players were out in force for the English Chess Championships in Kenilworth last weekend
In the open event of 84 players, Arya Cont, Alex Hertog, Jon Manley, Jan Murawski (all Oxford City) were joined by Magdalen College School’s fast-improving Noah Bevis and Oxford undergraduate Aron Saunders.
Oxford City’s Shambavi Hariharan competed in the women’s championship (10 players).
This was a tough 7-round affair featuring some of the best players in England, such as GMs Michael Adams, Gawain Maroroa Jones, Nikita Vitiugov, and WGM Elmira Mirzoeva. In such august company our fortunes were bound to be mixed but overall we did remarkably well.
Shambavi was the undisputed star of the Oxford show, sharing first prize in the English Women’s Championship with Elmira Mirzoeva on 4½/7, defeating the reigning champion in their individual encounter.
In some events that result would have been sufficient to crown her as the new titleholder, but the tournament’s rules prescribed a play-off of two rapid games. In an exciting finish followed by thousands of online chess fans, Elmira just edged it 1½–½.
A remarkable performance by Shambavi who at only 14 will have plenty of opportunities to repeat her success. A naturally gifted positional player, she has worked hard to hone her calculating skills, to devastating effect in the Oxford League last season.
Elmira opened with the Réti system to reach this position which resembles a Benoni in reverse. She has just played 14.Bh3 to attack the rook.
14…exf4!
An instructive moment. Shambavi sees that for the price of the exchange she can dominate the white squares, consolidate her space advantage and target the weak d3-pawn.
A very practical move to gain space on the kingside by driving the bishop back. The computer insists that g5 can be played immediately, but it’s a hard line to calculate and the resulting position tricky to assess: 19…g5 20.Bxg5 Bxg5 21.Nxg5 Rxf2 22.Kxf2 Qf5+ 23.Qf3 Qxg5 24.Qd5+ Ne6 25.Qxg5+ Nxg5 with advantage to Black.
20.Qe2 Bg4 21.Nce1 g5 22.Bd2 Bd6 23.Rb1?
White has to try 23.Bxa5 Nxa5 24.b4 Re8 25.Qc2 Re3 26.bxc5 Bxc5 27.Nd2.
Understandably, Elmira returns the exchange hoping to relieve some of the pressure, but her pieces remain bottled up on the back ranks. Shambavi’s domination of the board gives her a decisive advantage.
30…Qxf5 31.Qh5 Rf8 32.Qe2Ng4
33.b3
33.Rd2 was best but then Black breaks through with h4 and h3.
33…Nf234.Nc2 Nxd135.Qxd1? Qf2+
It’s mate next move.
0–1
An impressive display of positional control from start to finish.
Before the play-off at Kenilworth (left to right): Shankari, Shambavi, Jan, Ola and Jon
Jan attacks
Jan Murawski did well to finish on 4/7 given that his opponents included GM Jones and IM Brandon Clarke.
He considers this his best game, against another promising youngster. Excellent opening preparation and enterprising attacking play bring home the full point, with a few bumps along the way.
Jan Murawski – Lion Lebedev English Open Championship 2025 (6)
So far so theory, according to Jan. He has just played Rb1 with a view to opening the b-file to Black’s king.
19…Qf6
A new move from Lion. Ne6, Ng6 and Qb6 have all been tried before.
Giving Lion an opportunity to turn the tables. The best move is 33.Bf1 when Black has nothing better than 33…Rd6 34.dxc5 Re6 35.Rf4 Qe7 36.c6! winning for White.
33…Ne5?
33…Rd1+ 34.Bf1 Ra1!! (the rook cannot be taken because 35…Qxf2+ mates) 35.Rxa6+ Qxa6 36.Qxf7+ Qb7 and Black wins.
34.Qa1 Rd2
Threatening mate in two by 35…Qxf2+.
35.Rxa6+
A nice exchange sacrifice from Jan to expose Lion’s king and remove his own king from danger.
John Yates, who has died aged 92, was a longstanding and active member of Oxford City Chess Club. He made an enormous contribution to the club as a regular team player and captain, and was our affably effective treasurer for many years. He played for the county, was a regular at the Kidlington and Witney tournaments and was known to many players throughout Oxfordshire for his modesty, wry humour and skill at the board.
Born on 13 April 1932 in Egremont, Cumberland, John spent most of his childhood in Manchester, except when evacuated to a village in North Wales (close to an aluminium smelter targeted by the Luftwaffe!). After leaving Manchester Grammar school he tried his hand at carpet selling and farming, before obtaining a nursing qualification at Whittingham Hospital where he met his wife Jeannine. They married in 1955.
John then moved into accountancy, and in 1961 he and Jeannine settled in Oxford where he became treasurer of the Oxford Medical School. In the 1970s he had a spell as Accountant for the Randolph Hotel in Oxford before finally becoming a lecturer in Accounting at Oxford Polytechnic (which became Oxford Brookes University) until retirement. A keen cyclist, he would regularly ride his sit-up-and-beg bike to the Headington and Wheatley campus sites (dismounting to wheel it up Headley Way). He was an avid supporter of Oxford United since Southern League days, becoming a season ticket holder when the club moved to the Kassam Stadium. He would follow their results till the end when he couldn’t attend the matches.
He started playing chess for Kidlington Chess Club out of convenience because club nights coincided with the French adult education classes Jeannine taught in the same building – so they could drive there and back together. Jeannine remembers having to enter a smoke-filled room to find him after her lessons.
Mike March writes:
“John was one of the last of us old Kidlingtonians – chess players who, like me, belonged to Kidlington Chess Club before joining Oxford City when the two clubs merged. Now, sadly, John has passed on, following Ian Brooke, George Jones and Tony Wyatt before him, and leaving just Roger Smith and me as heirs to the Kidlington legacy. John was Kidlington Chess Club’s first team captain. We used to meet on Monday evenings and play our home matches at Exeter Hall, in rooms off the main hall. However, we did not have the building to ourselves and it could sometimes be acoustically challenging – to say nothing of what it did for you or your opponent’s concentration – whenever a roar would go up from spectators at a boxing match in the hall next door. But John, with his good-natured northern stoicism, always seemed the least fazed of any of us by such occurrences. Yet I believe he was a big Oxford United fan and a season ticket holder so maybe he saved his emotional energies for cheering on the U’s. One thing we know for sure, John was a great servant of and ambassador for chess, someone to whom, as chess players and club members, we shall always be grateful and who will long remain in our memory.”
John wrote some funny articles for our popular magazine Disinformator, edited by Sean Terry. ‘Yates’ Whine Lodge’ (Disinformator #29) featured the game Ben Savage v John Yates (University v City, Oxford League 1997). His note to the first move is priceless:
“ I. e4 d6
Sensation! When I married, I promised my wife, who is French, that I would always play the French Defence in her honour. This is only the second time I have been unfaithful!”
His waywardness is rewarded as he goes on to defeat the future FIDE Master in short order.
If John’s loyalty to the French Defence cost him points over the years, it brought some spectacular wins too. This article (from April 2003), written in the form of a letter to the editor, shows his resourceful play and self-deprecating humour.
Typically Effective Stodge
John Yates
“John Yates produced some typically effective stodge against Roger Smith, won a pawn, then the game…” Disinformator #26
Sir,
It is with some regret that I must ask permission to draw your readers’ attention to some of the rather hurtful epithets which you have attached to reports in your magazine of my recent games. They range from the condescending “habit of winning from lost positions” (#26) to the painful “lost for words” (#23) to the frankly derogatory “typically effective stodge” of your last magazine. (The last referred to a rather subtle win over a higher graded opponent!)
I realise that you and your associates are members of the crash bang wallop School of Chess, swashbucklers to a man, but you should spare some thought for the feelings and sensitivities of those of us who have led more sheltered lives, and enjoy a more thoughtful, considered, indeed subtle approach to what is, after all, the Beautiful Game.
I have therefore decided to speak out in my own defence. I admit some of the problem is my own fault, brought about by innate modesty, but I must force myself to put that aside – painful though that is – and present two games from my collection, both played against Simon Ansell (now an IM), just to show that I can swash a buckle just as well as the next.
The first shows an attacking combination of great panache, while the second contains the only move I have ever played over the board which I think deserves the word “brilliant”.
Simon Ansell – John Yates
Oxon Individual Ch, 6 January 1988
1.e4 e6
Yes I played the French Defence even in those days – it has been a great comfort to me over the years…
2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 dxe4
and this saves a lot of work, memorising, analysing!
All right – this is boring so far. [I didn’t say a thing! -Ed.] I have reached this position countless times and I don’t know what to do next, so I always produce the following manoeuvre – which never works.
A typical Closed Sicilian position. Black’s queenside pawn charge is well under way, whereas White’s kingside pawn charge hasn’t even started. Incidentally, Black’s discovered check, which I always expect, never materialises.
14.Be3 d4 15.Bf2 Rac8 16.a3 a5 17.h3
Pathetic?
17…a4 18.b3 Qa7 19.bxa4 bxa4 20.c4
Hoping to block the position and start on the kingside, but this is doomed to failure. The black knights will intrude.
20…Rb8 21.Rb2 Na5
and here they come.
22.Rdb1
and perhaps here I should have snatched the a-pawn.
22…Bc6 23.Be1 Nb3 24.Nc1 Nxc1 25.Qxc1 Qc7
26.Ba5!!
Allow me two exclamation marks!! A bolt from the blue!! My opponent sat as though paralysed. I got up, hoping to draw the crowd’s attention to my move, but there was no one in the room. It was a quiet night in Cowley after the end of the season. In fact, no one has seen this move from that day until this, over twelve years later. I have been expecting Simon to produce a book “My Hundred Best Games” or some such, which would modestly include one or two losses. It has not appeared yet, and I cannot wait any longer, as I might drop down dead and the world would never see my masterpiece.
At this point the game was adjourned, for play-on, but Simon rang later to resign. This was the first game in a best of three in the semi-final, and he was eager to get on with it. He came out for the next two games like a tiger and I was torn to pieces. Still, as he was graded over 200 (2200) at the time, and later became an International Master, I was very happy with my win.
1–0
“Typically effective stodge” – indeed!
Yours, etc
John Yates
March 2003
With thanks to Eric and Jeannine Yates, Sean Terry and Mike March.
What better way to mark the start of the chess season than invite a strong master to give a simultaneous display?
Talented International Master Yichen Han has an Elo rating of 2429 and is still only 16 years old. Born in the Netherlands, he learned chess using the ‘Step Method’, improved rapidly and qualified for the IM title in 2022. Now a student at Oxford’s Magdalen College School, he is about to apply for a place at university to study mathematics and statistics.
“I’ll have no time to be bored!”
Yichen agreed to take on 17 of our members on Monday 14 October.
Most were facing a master over the board for the first time and played more in the hope than expectation of testing Yichen’s strength, but they were joined by a sprinkling of seasoned league players confident of snatching at least a half-point.
The addition of clocks (80 minutes + 10 seconds per move) upped the ante for the master. Yichen was relishing the challenge. “I prefer quick games and tend to get bored playing a classical time control. This way I’ll have no time to get bored!”.
In effect, Yichen would be playing 17 local league games at once against some of our strongest players, including junior stars Jan Murawski and Shambavi Hariharan. Jan had even beaten Yichen in a regular tournament game!
And how would Yichen fare against his 18th opponent, and arguably his strongest one: the clock?
Even our less experienced players were keen to put up a fight. There were no early baths even though the outcome of at least four or five games seemed decided out of the opening. That was by no means the end of the story though: Yichen’s 18th opponent could do some heavy lifting for any defender able to stave off checkmate for a while.
Stewart defends as Jan looks on
Club regulars Stuart White and David Gubinelli were holding their own; Cumnor’s Nigel Moyse seemed cruising comfortably to a draw; while Jan and Shambavi were starting to apply serious pressure and slowing Yichen down.
After an hour time began to tell. Yechu Zhang scored a surprise win on the clock, and Yichen rewarded David’s tough defence with a draw offer that was gratefully accepted.
Yichen took a draw from Jan who was beginning to build an advantage.
Shambavi offered the stiffest opposition and played a blinder, winning a pawn and frustrating Yichen’s attempts to muddy the waters. We’ll analyse her fine win in a future post.
Stuart also grabbed a pawn and made a well-timed draw offer in a position that was technically won for him.
Last man standing Nigel Moyse had a one-on-one blitz shootout with the master. He went astray in an even rook ending but Yichen sportingly made peace in a winning position.
Final score: 11½/17 (Won 9 Drawn 5 Lost 3)
Many thanks to Yichen for being such a good sport. It was an enjoyable and instructive evening we are all keen to repeat.
Junior champion Shambavi Hariharan on her way to beating the master
Young Xander Scott stayed the course well past his bedtime
Congratulations to our new Oxfordshire county champions, Shambavi Hariharan and Jan Murawski.
Shambavi took the Girls’ Under-18 title on tiebreak from the talented Ukrainian Taisiia Kovalova.
Jan lifted the Boys’ Under-13 trophy ahead of Magdalen College School’s Yue Yue Sui (2nd) and Albert Hornsby (3rd).
Jan and Shambavi compete regularly for Oxford City in the First Division of the Oxford League and are gaining valuable experience playing weekend congresses.
Jan made his debut for Oxford in Division One of the prestigious Four Nations Chess League last weekend and a few weeks ago defeated his first Grandmaster, Keith Arkell.
Keith Arkell v Jan Murawski
East Midlands Chess Congress 2024
Expect to hear a lot more about Shambavi and Jan in the coming years!
Oxford City Chess Club 