Newport player Ian Jamieson has been chosen as the winner of the 2023-24 Colin Roberts Memorial Trophy, with judges unanimously picking his spectacular queen sacrifice game against Daniel Lockett.
There were six entries in the competition, which is a brilliancy prize for the best over-the-board game played by a Shropshire player during the season.
Comments from the judges included “a true masterpiece!” and “to have the foresight, creativity and vision to see the queen sacrifice and the courage to pull it off in the heat of a tense league match is quite something.”
Competition organiser Toby Neal said: “It is the first time that there has been immediate consensus among all three judges about the best game, which is particularly impressive as there was some tough competition. But, as one of the judges remarked, who doesn’t love a queen sac, and the judges also noted that it did not immediately win and Ian had to play the follow up well against an opponent who is nobody’s mug in order to bring home the full point.”
Among other entries which judges felt were a cut above were Archie Flavell’s win over Krish Thimmegowda and Nigel Ferrington’s victory over Joshua Pink in which Nigel went two pieces down in an opening which had the judges wondering just how much was “book.”
Sometimes weird-looking moves turn out to have come from the creative minds of great players, and so it was in perhaps the most unusual opening featured among the entries, in the game between Bill Bates and Chris Lewis, in which Bill seemed to blunder on only his second move – but Chris recognised that it had in fact been played in a recent game by none other than chess world champion Magnus Carlsen. As Carlsen lost, and so did Bill, it is unlikely to catch on.
Judges in the competition were chosen to span the divisions, and were Peter Kitchen, Richard Thompson, and Mark Billington.
The entries can be viewed in play-overable form on the Shropshire Chess website here.