This time last season, we went down to a crushing 4-1 defeat against Banbury in the first round of the Leamington League Open KO Cup. Wind forward one year and the boot was firmly on the other foot, as this year it was Kenilworth who had bragging rights, with the scoreline reversed.
Shorn of their top player, James Jackson, who is playing in the ridiculously strong Isle of Man Open this week, Banbury must have feared the worst when they found themselves up against our top four and a half players. (Joshua and Mike have identical grades, so its just pot luck that Joshua got the nod for board 5 on the evening!) As usual with us, though, the evening was anything but straightforward.
At about 7.33, nine players were in residence and ready to play. But where was our Board 4? I decided to call him up and find out. "I'll be there about 8.00," I was told. "I'm just on my way from Banbury." Yes, our man had gone to the wrong venue. (Carl did the same not long ago for a home match against Olton, also arriving at the Abbey Club just before the default time. Clearly some of our players have been over-heavily sprinkled with wanderlust.) Its enough to make a match captain weep.
Anyway, the match started, and just after 8.00 Andrew P (for it was he) duly arrived, to sundry hoots of derision and laughter. I explained the time limit to him. " We're playing 1 hour 30 minutes for all the moves. Or in your case, 1 hour 5 minutes for all the moves."
By that time Paul was already a piece up on board 1, as right from the opening Georgs Vikanis had sacrificed a piece for two pawns. It looked massively optimistic to me and I assumed Paul would simply bring home the point. How wrong can you be? Although he had started playing at a good tempo, Paul's play became slower and slower and disaster duly ensued, though fortunately my gaze was averted when the final moves were played out. A very uncharacteristic performance by Paul. (Except for the abysmal clock management, of course!)
I was quite surprised to be the one to equal the score on Board 3, with a win over Dan Rowan, after what had started off as a very boring game. From the opening (a Trompowsky) the position was dead level and plenty of pieces had been swapped off. Then I found a cheapo which won a pawn but allowed a white rook to the seventh. For a few moves it looked awkward, but after Dan missed a momentary chance to force a draw, I took control and hoovered up almost all his pawns. He just had a passed h pawn left in a rook and knight ending, but by that time I had woven a very nice mating net using my king and two advanced pawns in the middle of the board, and faced with the loss of a rook (the only way to stop mate) Dan resigned.
Andrew then put us in the lead, despite his massive (self-imposed!) time handicap, by finding some nice tactics (after a very irregular opening) which won the Black queen for rook and knight. White just had to avoid some tactics associated with the back rank and then his queen took control to secure the full point against Arthur Hibbitt.
I then adjourned to the bar for a post mortem, where news of two further Kenilworth wins filtered through. Joshua won on Board 5 after a rather hair-raising game against Mal Waddell where his king had to go walkabout to g6 in the early middle game. This is probably the inevitable consequence when you play a dubious opening, dubiously. I failed to see where the axe finally landed, but the White kingside pieces were finding it hard to get into the game, whereas Black had every piece in play - including his king!
I had been sat next to Andy B most of the evening, where he seemed to be making all the running against Arran Gundry in a sort of English v King's Indian/Benoni position. Although Black seemed to lose a lot of time with his knights in the opening, and be in a bit of a bind, he did eventually manage to engineer some counterplay, and after massive complications and confusion, a Black pawn emerged on e3 looking very dangerous. But Andy had seen everything (unlikely, now I think about what I've just written) and somehow engineered a rook ending where Black's e pawn was just falling off. Some White queenside pawns were in danger, but with two connected kingside passers the ending had to be winning for Andy. Especially when he was apparently gifted the Black rook!
So that's us into the semi-final against Shirley at the end of January.
But really, all this is a mere sideshow to the real issue to emerge from last night's events. Which is that I have been usurped as the club's pre-eminent blogger by Roy! Showing a speed and efficiency with which he has seldom previously been identified, he managed to get a report of last night's D team match (in which he wasn't even playing!) onto the club website by 12.21 this lunchtime, thus making me look like a complete laggard in comparison. I tell you all frankly, I am reeling under the pressure of this new competition. However, I still know a few tricks that he doesn't, so when you are voting for Blogger of the Year just remember who it was who gave you a reason to laugh out loud with this!
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