Happy Birthday Wishes to IM Brandon Clarke born on this day (December 14th), 1995. “Earth Song” by Michael Jackson was the UK Number One single.
Brandon George I Clarke was born in Leicester and now resides in Woodstock, Oxfordshire. He was a chess scholar at Wellington College, Berkshire and studied accounting at BPP. Upon leaving Wellington he relocated to California and became a chess coach in Orange County. A further relocation to Sydney, Australia allowed Brandon to become a coach at the Sydney Academy of Chess.
His personal web site is https://www.brandonclarke.co.uk/
His chess career started modestly but progress rapidly accelerated.
In the 2003 London Junior Championships he was =13 with 4/7
In July 2004 he secured his first published standard play grading of 84D and 62D for rapid play. His first recorded rapid play tournament was on the 4th of October 2003 being the Mini Squad Under 8s. In this event he beat a certain Jamie Horton who had a grading of 45D at the time.
In 2006 Brandon won outright the London Under 12 title with 7.5/9. Marcus Harvey was a runner-up. This situation was repeated one year later.
In 2009 Brandon won the LJCC Under-16 title this time with Akash Jain as runner-up. His TPR for a score of 5/6 was 199.
2010 saw the sharing of the British Under-15 Championship with Gordon Scott in Canterbury.
Brandon was a chess scholar at Wellington College, Berkshire and was part of the strongest school / college team to play in the National Schools competition for many years that included James Holland, Felix Jose Ynojosa-Aponte, Alexander Galliano, Latefah Meesam-Sparkes, Akash Jain, Adrian Archer-Lock and latterly William Foo and Richard Zhu. Despite being easily the strongest team they were denied the title by the antiquated age handicapping rules.
In 2016 Brandon became a FIDE Master.
He became an International Master in early 2019 and plays much chess in Australia, New Zealand and England having lived in the USA for some time after leaving Wellington College.
Aged 24 Brandon has achieved his highest FIDE rating of 2445 and it shows every sign of increasing.
With the White pieces Brandon is almost exclusively an e4 player with occasional forays with the Queen’s pawn. Against the Najdorf he prefers 6.Bg5 and allows the Marshall against the Ruy Lopez.
As the second player he plays the Najdorf and the King’s Indian Defence most of the time.
Brandon has his own YouTube Channel.
On Chess.com he plays under the handle of Biranidun with a blitz rating of 2847.
[pgn]
[Event “GBR-ch Major 106th”]
[Site “Torquay”]
[Date “2019.07.29”]
[Round “3”]
[White “Clarke, Brandon GI”]
[Black “Sugden, John N”]
[Result “1-0”]
[ECO “B42”]
[WhiteElo “2433”]
[BlackElo “2068”]
[Annotator “British Chess News”]
[PlyCount “77”]
[EventDate “2019.07.27”]
[EventType “swiss”]
[EventRounds “9”]
[EventCountry “ENG”]
[SourceTitle “EXT 2020”]
[Source “ChessBase”]
[SourceDate “2019.10.17”]
[SourceVersion “1”]
[SourceVersionDate “2019.10.17”]
[SourceQuality “1”]
{[%evp 0,77,34,21,52,43,49,34,40,41,66,48,47,47,43,35,47,41,41,55,77,75,36,18,
67,99,103,85,104,101,87,91,119,104,92,97,97,93,197,192,187,100,100,114,184,161,
176,177,184,187,187,195,188,202,202,157,202,209,208,213,214,209,249,267,274,
238,270,269,658,276,279,269,292,308,309,298,342,356,356,361]} 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3
e6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 a6 5. Bd3 Nc6 6. Nxc6 dxc6 7. Nd2 e5 8. Nc4 Nf6 9. O-O
Bg4 10. Qe1 Nd7 11. f4 exf4 12. Bxf4 Bc5+ 13. Kh1 O-O 14. Qg3 Bh5 15. Nd6 $16
Bxd6 16. Bxd6 Re8 17. e5 Nf8 18. Rf4 Re6 $146 (18… Ne6) 19. Raf1 Rh6 20. Bxf8
Qxf8 21. Bc4 Qe7 $6 (21… b5 22. Bb3 Qe7 $16) 22. Bxf7+ $1 Bxf7 23. Rxf7 Qxf7
24. Rxf7 Kxf7 25. Qb3+ Kf8 26. Qxb7 Rd8 27. Qb4+ Ke8 28. h3 Re6 29. Qb7 Rd5 30.
Qxg7 Re7 31. Qg8+ Kd7 32. e6+ Kc7 33. Qg3+ Kb7 34. c4 Rd8 35. c5 Kc8 36. Qa3
Rxe6 37. Qxa6+ Kc7 38. Qa7+ Kc8 39. Qxh7 1-0
[/pgn]
In January 2019 Brandon scored a very impressive victory in the 126th (!) New Zealand Open. “The 2019 126th New Zealand Open is part of the 126th New Zealand Congress and is a 9-round Swiss event being held at the Waipuna Conference Centre in Auckland from 14-22 January 2019.”
Brandon made a welcome return to the UK and comfortably won the 2019 Major Open in Torquay with 8.5/9 as an IM.
Brandon plays for Australia Kangaroos in the Pro Chess League.
The ECF grading web site shows his only club to be Littlethorpe (in Leicestershire) although Brandon played for Warwickshire Select in the Four Nations Chess League (4NCL).
