Grandmaster David Howell played an impromptu simul against us this week on a day the club was also filmed by a BBC TV crew and held a Grand Prix night.
Needless to say, England’s number 2 beat everyone.
Except… he did find himself checkmated by Battersea’s oldest player, 92-year-old Peter Yusoff (pictured with David above).
However, closer inspection revealed there was a suspicion that Peter, rated 16 ECF, may have accidentally moved twice.
David, being the ultra nice guy that he is, didn’t have the heart to break it to him. Unfortunately, VAR was not in operation to see if the 251-point rating difference between Peter and David had been overcome fairly.
On every other board David blew away the opposition with ease. The simul was a 60-minute timed event and included several strong players, including Aldo Camilleri (198ECF).
Here’s Aldo’s game:
Not a bad game, eh.
David had been at Battersea to take part in a short report filmed by the BBC for its primetime programme The One Show.
Camera crews were at the club and interviewed David, club president Alan Palmer and secretary Leon Watson about our rising star Shreyas Royal.
Watch out for that on BBC1, we think, in mid-April.
David then stayed on and spent the day with Aldo and Leon before the simul.
As David took on around 30 players (I didn’t count), we also held a Grand Prix night.
The latest results and tables are available on the Grand Prix page here and a report from organiser Stephen Welch is here.
