GM Simon K Williams Archives - Camberley Chess Club

Match Report – Rapid A team take on Fleet & Farnborough

25 March 2025

Report from Camberley A v Fleet & Farnborough A – 24th March 2025

The lineups for this match looked as they typically do for Camberley, with a team consisting of Martin on board one, Colin two, Paul on three and Tim on four. On any other day this would be a strong team eyeing the victory. However for the second time this season we faced GM Simon K Williams on board one, and 2200-rated Blair Connell on board two.

So to get the standard report out of the way, the match ended 5.5-2.5 to Fleet & Farnborough. It was a tough match, with the first round of games ending with a loss on board one & two, and draws on boards three & four.

The already dim hopes of the winning were doing little to dampen spirits in the second round, coming out guns-blazing, channelling Han Solo’s “never tell me the odds” line.

The second round saw Tim play his trusty London System on board four, taking home a win after his opponent made a critical error coming out of the opening. Both Paul and Colin met similar fates ending up with losses in their second games.

With one game left, and the match already being won for Fleet & Farnborough, eveyone emptied out of the room heading for the bar in typical fashion, already predicting another loss on board one.

Those paying particular attention to the score at this point may slowly come to the revelation of what must have happened on board one…

Simon and Martin having a post-mortem on the game.

“Against All Odds” – Martin “Stone” Wallman

After dubbing himself before the match a sacrifical lamb to board one’s GM Simon K Williams, Martin had done the unthinkable.

The game started with Martin playing a Scandinavian, certainly a brave opening considering his opponent. As the game progressed into a tricky middlegame, material was even… You would think Martin was down a queen if all you listened to were the opinions of everyone in the bar.

General consensus in the bar was that this was heading for a Martin defeat, simply due to the 659-point rating difference

Despite the match already being lost and thoughts of his previous double-defeat at the hands of Simon, Martin persisted into an endgame which, with perfect play, was a draw. To even get to this point against such a formidable opponent was enough to go home happy, but Martin wasn’t letting go that easy.

A Draw!

You should have seen the captain’s reaction! Martin had successfully defended a same-coloured bishop ending, where any small mistake would end in disaster. With Simon setting tactical trap after trap, Martin navigated the endgame perfectly – both with under 3 minutes on the clock!

After a long time shuffling Simon realised Martin “Stone” Wallman was not going to break down, and accepted a draw offer.

The full game is below, annotated by Martin, and on our Games Page, as well as our Hall Of Games study on lichess. The game goes up until the endgame, where you can see the drawn position. The game went on for many unrecorded moves after that of deadlock and solid defending before the draw was finally agreed.

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GM Simon K Williams comes to Camberley Chess Club

2 December 2024

GM Simon Williams is well known in the English and International chess scene, creating many online courses and presenting coverage and analysis of top level matches and tournaments. Currently, GM Williams is ranked number 18 in the country with a rating of 2476! After the match, he informed us that in the coming weeks he is off to Norway, to cover the World Chess Championship.

Quite a few of our club are actively watching every game of this historic event, and are discussing and following along with each game via Whatsapp, so we are looking forward to seeing him cover it.

Last thursday the 28th of November, the Rapid A team had a scheduled match against Fleet and Farnborough in the Surrey Border League RP1. GM Simon K Williams (also known as Ginger GM on social platforms) had played as a junior at Fleet and Farnborough Chess Club, and has recently returned to playing for them in the local leagues. This is where we found him down as playing on Board 1 against our very own “GM” (General Manager) and chairperson Martin Wallman.

On the left, for Camberley: Martin J Wallman (1819) and Colin J Lyne (1776)
On the right, for Fleet & Farnborough: GM Simon K Williams (2476), Blair Connell (2231)

Game 2, Martin Wallman v. GM Simon K Williams

I had the pleasure of being able to witness the final few blows of the last game between Ginger GM and Martin, and some key analysis after the game. Let’s take a look at the second game between GM Simon Williams and Martin Wallman. If you wish to easily plug this into chess.com’s analysis click here!

The game ended with an astounding checkmate that came from the Grandmaster’s advanced pawns out of the opening, nullifying Martin’s bishop and knight. The engine reads black’s accuracy at 95%, which is a level of play most cannot get in a standardplay game. Yet, when I had watched GM Williams deliver his final few moves to checkmate Martin, he had only used just over a minute on the clock!

We at Camberley Chess Club are glad to see Grandmaster Simon Williams playing locally. We remain in correspondence with him, and our chess club looks forward to exploring opportunities to collaborate with him in the future. It’s inspiring to see a player of his caliber engaging with the local chess community, and we eagerly anticipate following his continued contributions to the game.