IM Daniel Cawdery simul

Report by Ben Harte

On Tuesday 18th July 2023 IM Daniel Cawdery from South Africa visited our chess club.  He played a simultaneous exhibition match against 24 of our junior players. All of our players had the Black pieces as is usual in a Simul. Each player had to wait for the IM to appear before making their move, but they had to have a move ready to play immediately he arrived at their board.

This was a great opportunity for our junior players to take on a titled IM player with a GM norm under his belt. We probably could have had 48 players to take him on, but it would have been very cramped and very unfair on Daniel who had readily agreed to take on our juniors. Mostly our players were year 6 and above.

We started play just after 5.50pm and at 7.20pm all of our 24 juniors were still playing.  I think I detected some slight anxiety from our visiting IM that he had not whittled down the field at all. He then started getting his wins along with a fancy queen sacrifice against Aaryan. After 1 hour and 50 minutes he had won 20 of the 24 games with just Oscar, Ray, Ashwin and Davi holding out!

Then after two hours he had won 23 games with just Davi holding out!

In fact Davi had much the better position too. As is usual when it is down to just one player, a clock is introduced as it is now a one-to-one match between Davi and the IM. Davi faltered a little, but held out to achieve an excellent draw.  Very well done Davi!

Well done to all players, I think our IM was very impressed.

Ben Harte
Junior chess coach