Although I at the time announced that I would no longer be a member of South Norwood Chess Club, I realised that the was one big problem with that decision; the fact that I would not be able to get my hands on the Ellary Williams Memorial and Stoneleigh trophies. Therefore, in order for me to receive the two trophies that worked so hard to earn in the first place, I would have to reverse my decision and return to the club. I eventually received the Stoneleigh trophy on Wednesday 30th October 2013 before the start of an away match at Wallington and the Ellary Williams Memorial trophy the following day on Thursday 31st October 2013 at South Norwood Chess Club.
I started 2014 with one of the biggest scalps of my career, beating Koby Kalavannan in a major scalp in the first knockout phase of the CCF World Cup. At the time, his ECF grade was 159 while mine was only 121. At the time of writing, (February 2021) his grade has now increased to 226. I started with a very quiet opening in order for me to recover from the heavy rain that I had to travel in that night. He responded dynamically but left some holes in his defence and made a bad exchange that really allowed my position to gain power towards his own king. In the end, he simply suffered due to the growing positional pressure of my well placed pieces. Although the game lasted long into the night, I was confident after a while that I was going to win this as my positional pressure started to materialize. I can't even put it into words how joyful I was when the game finally ended. It really showed me the value of learning positional understanding in chess and how it can beat even significantly stronger opponent.
During that summer, I would participate in the Felce Cup for the first time since my disastrous debut campaign in 2010. I would have to travel to the Trinity Road Club in Wimbledon as there were not enough participants from south Norwood Club to form a South Norwood Section. I was always fond of the venue as it was an elegant little room that was upstairs from a pub that had a pool table, a dartboard and a TV screen. My campaign got off to a slow start with 2 draws with black but with my first game with white became the moment that I had waited 4 years for. My first ever win in the Felce Cup after I had out-played my opponent in a rook and bishop endgame. I was soo happy and releived to finally end the curse of never winning a Felce cup game before. It meant that I was able to simply enjoy the rest of the tournament. However, this was as good as my tournament got as I could only mange one draw with my last 3 games, losing the last game tragically haven't earned a winning position. This ment that I had finished the tournament with an equal record of 1 win, 1 loss and 4 draws. Still, I was nice to end the wait for a Felce Cup which also meant that I can go into the new season in good spirits.
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