One seventh of the way to glory

Starting the second half of the season in second place, but three point off the top, leads me to believe we may well need to win all seven of our remaining games in order to take the title. The first hurdle in our path was that of Banbury B, a strangely amorphous team, as the club has so many players rated between 155 and 160 that you never know who is going to turn out on a particular day. My game, as white against Chris Evans, was, as has so often been the case recently, the first to finish. Usually this is a good sign for my performance, but in this case I was comprehensively smashed off the board by my opponent, who constructed a mating attack so severe the only way to stave it off was to give up sufficient amounts of material as to make playing on ridiculous. The worst part of it all was I don't think my opponent used more than 30 seconds for any move in the game. I don't mind losing every now and again, but being completely demolished by a mid-150s graded player who didn't even need to think to do it does not bode well for the future. I think I shall start claiming it is part of a strategy to gradually worsen my performances over the next few weeks so that, rather than being disappointed, everyone is instead thrilled when I finally leave.

Fortunately not everyone on the team was playing as badly as me. Mark, black on board two against Gary Jackson, played his now trademark Najdorf and seemed, for reasons that were not entirely clear, to have a fairly standard looking position about 3 tempi up, so black's attack was looking menacing before white had really got going. Mark played what looked like a thouroughly crushing piece sacrifice to open up his opponent's king, and I then realised he could also win the piece back on the next move as well, meaning he hadn't even given up material to do so. Before long there was a black pawn on c3 (with the white king on b1), and two black rooks on the open a file. Unsurprisingly, mate soon followed, with the post match analysis finding numerous exciting different ways that white could get mated on different squares of the board, but no way to save himself. Another case study in the virtues of giving up the French Defence (let other users of this turgid opening take note).

Andy had a less exciting but equally comprehensive win, as white on board one against Neil Staples. Black started with the offbeat, and in my opinion unimpressive, black knight's tango opening (1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 Nc6) and Andy, after pushing d5, ended up with a very pleasant space advantage that was surprisingly reminiscent of a mirrored Alekhine Defence (d5 hitting the c6 knight, rather than e5 hitting the f6 knight, etc.) He seemed to move from one slight but persistent advantage to another, from a space advantage to his opponent having pawn weaknesses to Andy having more active pieces, until I briefly left the room with Andy looking like he was about to win a pawn. When I came back he had won a piece. I have no idea how this happened, but it certainly put an end to the game nice and swiftly, and we moved 2-1 ahead.

Sadly, however, it only looked like this was going to be good enough for us to hold the draw. Carl once again played his strange hybrid of a French and Caro-Kann, basically playing c6 and e6 without developing the light-squared bishop. This opening may have given him a fine position against me in our Coventry League game but despite (or perhaps because) of this I'm unconvinced by the positions black gets. Carl in particular suffered from “too many knights syndrome”, first from an errant steed on a6 not contributing to the game, and then by having the same knight reposition itself to e8 where, sadly, the only useful square it could go to (f6) was already occupied by another knight with nowhere else to go. I won't go into this any further but will instead just give my thoughts after each of the last ten moves of the game played by Carl's opponent: Carl is lost, Carl is lost, Carl is completely lost, Carl is completely lost, Carl might be able to hang on now, Carl is lost, Carl is completely lost, Carl is completely lost, Carl is completely lost, Carl's opponent just blundered his queen. It wasn't quite Phil levels of brilliance but it certainly came close. A testament to the rewards of good defence and further evidence, if any were needed, that in the Leamington League it is worth playing on a long time before you resign, as you never know what might happen.

Final score: Banbury B 1 – 3 Kenilworth A

Six matches left to go: six more wins required.