For Oxfordshire players, the end of summer heralds the new chess season.

The first league matches take place on October 8. Before that, on September 16, there’s a 25 board simultaneous display by Nigel Short at the Best Western Hotel in Banbury.

There’s also the Witney Rapid-play to look forward to on September 29 My club, Oxford City , has its first meeting of the new season from 7.30pm on Monday, September 10, at St Margaret’s Institute in Polstead Road and, whatever their standard, new members are always welcome.

Details of all Oxfordshire chess club nights and the events mentioned above can be found on the Oxfordshire Chess Association website.

For ambitious players the e2e4 tournaments run by Leicestershire’s Sean Hewitt are a great resource. Sean’s tournaments, which occur regularly throughout the year, are Fide rated and usually take the form of either closed round robins where norms are available or Fide opens. The next e2e4 tournament takes place in High Wycombe on October 12-14 and details are available online. At the recent Gatwick International run by Sean, there were six 10-player all-play-all sections.

The Oxford 4NCL player Michael Healey took clear first place in the Challengers section with a score of 6/9. In the following fine round 7 game, Michael achieves a comfortable and harmonious position with unorthodox opening play from which he launches a vicious attack.

White: Michael Healey Black: Michael Lexton 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Nc3 A noncommittal move — maintaining the option of playing an open Sicilian with d4 at some point. 3...e6 4.b3!? Unusual, but logical. Black’s 3...e6 means his pawns are not configured to easily block the long diagonal. 4...a6 5.Bb2 Qc7 6.g3 Perfectly sensible — but only a handful of recorded games have ever gone this way. 6...Nf6 7.Bg2 Be7 8.0–0 0–0 9.d3 d6 10.Qd2 Bd7 11.Rae1 Rac8 12.Nd1 Rfd8 13.Ng5!? Michael wants to play f4. 13...Qa5?! 14.Bc3 Qb6 Wisely thinking better of 14...Qxa2 15.Ne3 when, with 16.Ra1 coming, Black will lose material. 15.Ne3 Be8 16.f4 d5 17.exd5 Nxd5 18.Bxd5! exd5 19.Bxg7! Computers confirm that this stunning sacrifice is watertight — but in any case such moves are very hard to meet over the board. 19...Bxg5 One idea behind the sacrifice is that 19...Kxg7 is met by 20.Nf5+ Kf6 21.Qe2! Kxf5 22.Qh5 and the end is nigh for Black. 20.fxg5 Kxg7 21.Rf6 Better was 21.Qf2 and then after 21...Nd4 22.c3 Nb5 23.Qf4 White’s intention of simply playing Nf5, Qe5 and mating on g7 is very hard to meet. 21...Qc7? Instead Black should counter-attack and begin by pinning the night on e3 with 21...c4.

22.Qd1 Now was the time for 22.Nf5+! since 22...Kg8 23.g6! hxg6 24.Qh6! gxf5 25.Qg5+ Kf8 26.Rh6 leads to mate. 22...Ne7?! 23.Qh5 Ng8 24.Nf5+ Here Black resigned since — after 24.Nf5+ — both 24...Kf8 25.Qxh7 and 24...Kh8 25.Rxe8! Rxe8 26.Rxf7 are hopeless for him. 1–0