The rules for the Geof Tyrrell Prize are here.

Winners of Geof Tyrrell Best Game Prizes:

2025

Iwan Cave wins Geof Tyrrell Best Game Prize 2025

In this the sixteenth year of the competition in memory of Geof, the judges, FMs Stuart Hutchings and Howard Williams, looked at the scores of fifteen games which qualified for consideration. In short, these are wins or draws by Welsh players against foreign opposition
rated both 2250 or over and 150 points or more above the Welsh player. In 2025, in addition to the fifteen, the judges were aware from the match results in the European Club Cup last October that there were a couple of drawn games which would have been considered had
we been able to obtain the scores. We do need players to send us their qualifying games, especially if they are not available from generally available on-line sources (such as TWIC).

To return to the fifteen games, these consisted of 12 draws but only three wins and, naturally enough, it was these three that made our short list. Two of the short-listed players Jose Camacho and Iwan Cave  contributed between them seven of the draws (five and two
respectively) with only Tim Kett playing more than one of the rest. He has annotated those two with refreshing honesty in the attached game collection.

Of the three wins Greg Toczek’s game was a tense and dramatic affair from the European Club Cup where, after a very complicated fight, he secures a winning advantage only to let it slip into a rook endgame which should have been drawn. But then his opponent, doubtless
suffering from fatigue, commits an extremely instructive blunder to lose immediately. The game with Greg’s detailed notes is also in our games attachment.

Jose Camacho’s game was played in a strong master tournament in Cambridge in May last year and was against the rapidly improving English player, Matthew Wadsworth, who obtained the GM title shortly afterwards. It is a fine technical achievement showing how to exploit a small advantage.

Comparing this classy Capablanca-like effort with the third candidate in the short list, Iwan Cave’s battle in the World Junior (under 20) Championship in Denmark in February last year, was rather like comparing chalk and cheese. Iwan’s opponent was rated some 250 points ahead of him at the time but declined Iwan’s early pawn offer in a Bb5 Sicilian. A position with many of the characteristics of an Advanced French ensued where White’s k-side attacking chances were more or less balanced by Black’s fluid piece place on the opposite wing. Iwan avoided exchanges to maintain his attacking prospects and in what looks like a mutual time scramble Black cracked. Again this game is annotated in our attachment.

A difficult decision this time, in another year any of the 3 games could have been the winner. In the end we plumped for Iwan’s effort because of the large rating difference (‘giant killing’ is an important part of the award) in a game which flowed nicely, without any obvious errors by his opponent until he was lost.

The games can be downloaded here:

2020-24

This competition has not been held since that for 2019 but as noted in our earlier website announcement we are now catching up with the award of four trophies for games played in 2020-21 (combining the two Covid years), 2022, 2023 and 2024. The detailed rules can be found in the link above but briefly to qualify for consideration a game must be a win or a draw by a player qualified to represent Wales in a FIDE competition at the time the game was played against a non-Welsh opponent graded over 2250 and FIDE-rated at least 150 points above the entrant at that time.

No additional games beyond the fifty-eight identified by judges Stuart
Hutchings and Howard Williams (both FMs) as meeting the above criteria came to light (see earlier announcement for scores). But there were plenty among them to make awarding the trophies a far from straightforward exercise. And many thanks to those who submitted notes on their games.

To summarise the 58:

The number of qualifying games is rather down on pre-Covid years (2019: 30) but the number of wins less so (2018: 7).

Turning now to the awards themselves:

2020 and 2021

Six of the 14 qualifying games were played either by Allan Pleasants or Jon Blackburn. Among them Allan’s resounding king-hunt from the European Team Championship, a notoriously difficult event for us, brightened up the immediate post-Covid period while Jon’s win against the Irish IM Tom O’Gorman was a nice game too. But the clear winner of the award for this period goes to Jon for his classic and already much publicised miniature against GM Matthew Turner.

2022

Tim Kett’s win with Black against IM Hogni Neilsen is a fine example of
seizing an opportunity, in this case leading to a crushing kingside attack but Tom Brown’s fine positional victory against GM Oleg Romanishin from the Minorca Open takes the black dragon. Romanishin obtained his GM title in 1976 and was a member of the Soviet team in the 1978 Olympiad (defeating incidentally Iolo Jones in the USSR’s hesitant victory over Wales). But in this game it is hard to tell who is the grandmaster as Tom ensures that Black never obtains the slightest glimmer of play in the centre or on the kingside and slowly succumbs on the
other side of the board.

2023

Jon Blackburn’s positional pawn sacrifice against the English IM (and WGM) Harriet Hunt was an instructive game and John Cooper’s crushing win against the French IM Rajat Makkar also drew the judges’ attention. But a third game from the 4NCL, John’s other win, this time with Black against the English IM Ezra Kirk, takes the prize. John has stayed faithful to his opening repertoire which goes back many years, reflecting much study and original thinking, and here with Black in a sharp line of the Scheveningen Sicilian he sacrifices a piece to launch a protracted attack against an exposed white king.

2024

In Rathbone-Jones against Hobson Ifan is rewarded for taking chances when his queen sacrifice, initially for two minor pieces, leads to complexities which floor his opponent. And in the European Club Cup Lee Davis outplays his Serbian opponent in the sort of unbalanced rook endgame at which GMs usualy excel. Well done both but the trophy  goes to Olivia Smith for her sustained attack against GM Keith Arkell in the Guernsey Open. In this game Black barricaded his king-side against Olivia’s clearly intended sacrifices but still they came, culminating in a winning rook offer.

It is hoped to award the trophy for 2025 early next year in line with the pre Covid timetable.

The four winning games can be accessed in pgn. format below. The notes to Jon Blackburn’s game and Olivia Smith’s are by the winners and to the other two by the judges.

Awards