FRED HAMPERL has become the first Guernseyman in 30 years to be crowned the Channel Islands champion. The island champion took care of Jersey’s number one Jonathan Hawes during the recent inter-insular at the Pennisula Hotel to claim the Garde Trophy. The most recent Sarnian to win the title was Dave Browning back in 1977.
Hamperl’s win also ensured that Guernsey tasted an 8.5-7.5 victory over Jersey.
‘I’ve never had the chance to play him before because I’ve never been island champion before,’ said Hamperl.
‘It was a fantastic feeling and we celebrated pretty well into the night.’
Over the last couple of years Hamperl has really jumped into the limelight.
Early in 2006 he gained the prestigious Fide Master after a great performance at the Chess Olympiad in Turin.
Then at October’s Fortis Guernsey International Chess Festival he claimed what was his best win of his career when he defeated Scotland’s Mark Fraser, who had a much higher player rating than him. Hamperl puts his success down the coaching of former British champion and international master Robert Bellin who has been working with the Guernsey team and has been a regular at the annual festival for a number of years.
‘With Robert coaching it’s just been getting better and better,’ said Hamperl.
‘He models himself on other sport coaches, looking at the psychological side and motivation, which is very important in chess.’
In the match, Guernsey automatically took a 2-0 lead when both Jeff Burton and Mark Ozanne’s Jersey opponents failed to appear. Eric Palmer was the first home player to score a point when he picked up a draw against Philip Le Feuvre.
Hamperl was the next scorer for the Sarnians with his win over Hawes.
Kerry Bateman, Tom Moriarty, Paul Cutter and Matthew Kirk then all racked four wins in a row for the home side before Jersey notched up five victories to make the score 7.5-5.5 to the greens.
Peter Kirby went to claim a draw in the closing stages and with that news, Russell Finch, knowing that he no longer needed to win for Guernsey to come out on top, offered a draw to his opponent Graham Boxall which was duly accepted. The visitors won the last match to end the scores 8.5 to 7.5.
‘It was fairly clear that they had the stronger team but they faulted on two boards so we started 2-0 up,’ said Hamperl.
‘Our top boards got pretty decimated but the bottom boards did well.’
The inter-insular followed the second Spectrum Tournament that featured 22 players. Guernsey’s candidate chess master Toby Brookfield won the second grading band and was equal first with David Sedgwick and Daniel Rosen overall.
Ten-year-old Peter Williams won a prize in this grading band while Sarnians Terry Harnden took the third grading band and Greg Lowe won a prize in the fourth.
Christopher Galpin won the Channel Islands junior prize.
Local players have also recently gained experience in overseas tournaments. Hamperl, Brookfield and Anton Muller all attended the 23rd Cappelle La Grande Open tournament in France that had more than 600 competitors from around the world.
Brookfield and Muller had a great time as they each won their grading band while one of Hamperl’s best games was a draw against woman grandmaster Laura Rogule, from Latvia.
Article posted on 17th May, 2007 - 12.00am
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