A new dawn

And so it came to pass that a new season was upon us, and we travelled off to the thriving metropolis of Leamington for our first game. A combination of two matches in an evening, various excuses for absence (both plausible and implausible), and a team captain off playing for some other team, left me back in interim charge of the B team, and saddled with a very motley crew of chess players, few of whom will have been expected to have been playing this match before the start of the season. Nevertheless, despite these handicaps, some almost reasonable chess was played, with the exception of course of my game.

Joshua Pink vs. Steve Burnell

Having decided that the openings I played last year were far too sensible, I decided to rectify this, with the game beginning 1. e4 c6 2. Nc3 d5 3. Qf3 dxe4 4. Nxe4 Nd7 5.Nh3. having successfully misplaced all three of my developed pieces, I was pleasantly surprised as I developed a healthy kingside attack during the game, the particular highlight being my h3 knight re-routing itself via f2 and g4, thereby almost justifying my placement of it in the opening. Despite not being able to find a mate, I was still very satisfied to enter a bishop endgame a pawn up, and carefully calculated a winning king and pawn endgame I could force a transposition to. However, unfortunately, due to my inability to count above 7, it turned out my winning endgame was in fact a dead draw, and by the time I realised it was too late to back out. The only thing that made me feel a little better was that on my last move of the game, I had a choice to force a draw by promoting a pawn to either a queen, rook or bishop, not something you can usually manage. Thankfully, my hand didn’t reach out for the knight, and a draw was agreed.

Ben Egid vs. Carl Pickering

During the game, this seemed like a very sensibly played Reti opening by both sides, with a relatively early draw agreement being a fair reflection on the balance of play. It was only when I briefly listened in to the post-mortem afterwards that it became clear that Carl’s opponents plans, if the game had continued, would have almost immediately wrecked his own position and give n us an advantage. Still, there was no way to know at the time this would have been the case, and an early draw with black can hardly be considered a bad result in a team match.

Dave Shurrock vs. Ben Graff

There was clearly a difference of opinion over this game. I think that Dave was much better from very early on in an advance French, and deservedly converted that advantage through the middle-game. It transpired later that both players thought the game was more or less even, and it was just a particular inaccuracy on one move by black that led to the loss. Still, since I thought white was better, and white won the game, I am going to blindly stick to my original idea, no matter what evidence is produced to the contrary. After all, it is what all good chess players do (I think).

Alejandro Bonillo vs. John Harris

Anyone who knows John's games from the Coventry league will be aware they follow a very traditional pattern. He will obtain a crushing position out of the opening, this advantage will slowly dissipate over time, until finally in time trouble he will blunder and lose the game. For a long time I feared the same would happen here, as after a typical exchange sacrifice on c3 in a Sicilian Dragon, more and more piece exchanges kept occurring, with each brining white slightly closer to just being the exchange up in an endgame. However, in mutual time pressure just before the first time control, John found a very elegant mate with a rook and knight trapping the king in the corner, and secured the victory his early play had merited.

Final score: Leamington 1 – Kenilworth 3

A nice convincing start to the season though, given only one of the people playing will be a regular player for the team over the rest of the season, perhaps not too much should be read into the overall result.