As mentioned by Simon, I conducted my first ever simultaneous display on Tuesday, which was very enjoyable, albeit more difficult than I probably envisaged.
Upon arriving, there was a pretty full room, with about 20 people already there. There was a full mixture of 1st, 2nd and 3rd division players from our club, and even Warwickshire Champion, Henrik Stepanyan. He was participating to, amongst 16 players in total. I was already thinking this was not going to be easy!
We began, and for the first hour, there was a cathedral like hush. It all seemed so serious, and slightly daunting at first. For a while, nothing too drastic was happening, although that would soon change.
The first result came by way of a blunder by myself, as I missed a knight fork that netted Ed Goodwin a queen for a piece. Ed was planning to give details of this game on a report here, but he's instead going to include it in his soon to be released book "Ed Goodwin's Greatest Games"; available online and in bookstores, in the near future.
I also had a very eventful game with Margarita. Again, a blunder by me of similar proportions, led to me having my queen pinned against my king by her bishop. Things were not looking good. However, in the resulting position, I had very active pieces fortunately, and some potential threats of my own. I had possible discovered attacks against her king in the air, as well as forks available. Margarita still had possible tactical opportunities as well. In the end, I won this game, although not until we'd both had a roller coaster of a game. Forks, pins, discovered attacks, loose pieces, double attacks, it was all happening here, for both of us. Even near the end, I managed to walk into another fork, but luckily still had a winning position, just !
I was pleased to get a draw with Henrik. I tried a Danish gambit, which Henrik declined with an early thematic d5 counter. It transposed to a position similar to Scandinavian defence games (after 1e4 d5). The position seemed reasonably level out of the opening, but after a brief flurry of tactical exchanges, we reached a rook ending, in which I felt my pawns were more vulnerable than Henrik's. However, Henrik offered a draw, which I quickly accepted. To be honest, I think Henrik was going easy on me a bit in this game, judging by some of my past experiences playing him, (which have not usually gone in my favour).
Amongst quite a few mistakes, I did manage to win some games reasonably smoothly, and even threw in a couple of successful bishop sac's at various stages of the evening. In the end, I won 10, drew 2 (the other draw versus my team mate, Bernard), and lost 2, (Simon Weaver won against me, as well as Ed). 2 other games had to be abandoned, unfortunately, as they were both quite interestingly poised.
One thing I did notice was how much easier it seemed to be once a few games were finished, and I was able to get around the group very quickly when only a few games remained. I think it took some of the remaining players a bit by surprise, as they'd had a good 5 minutes on each move in the early stages.
Anyway, I can't really mention all the games, as there would be too many, but if anyone wants to mention their game, or a particular position that occurred, let me or Simon know, and we'll look into publishing it.
Dave
