This tournament has provided me with the first ever opportunity to play in the same team as a GM (Jim Plaskett), and today's match was the first I've ever played in which everyone other than me had a genuine FIDE title. We mustered 1 GM, 1 FM and 1 WFM, while Canada weighed in with 3 IMs and an FM, thoughtfully resting their 4th IM today. We were outgraded by 200 ELO points on the bottom two boards, and had almost matching pluses/minuses on the top 2. Regrettably, Professor Elo had a good day today and got the result just about right.
On Board 2, Andrew Lewis got a good draw for us with Black, and amazingly that was the only concluded game for about the first four and a half hours. Then I managed to pull off a draw with Black against FM Paul Ross. I was slightly worse for much of the game, but then things went berserk in mutual time trouble. First white sacrificed an exchange for a pawn. Then he found he had to sac a second exchange, and swap the queens off, so on about move 30 I found myself with 2 rooks against a bishop and a knight. One of my rooks had to give back an exchange, but an all too familiar brain freeze saw me move my king to unpin one rook, forgetting that the other rook was unguarded on a8. So now he had two pieces against my rook, when it should have been rook v knight, and a probable win for me. In a completely random sequence of moves, though, I then lost 2 pawns to knight forks, but my opponent returned the brain freeze compliment by getting his knight trapped, and at the time control it was bishop and 5 v Rook and 2. It should have been drawn, even though White had connected a and b pawns and a monstrous white square bishop, and my king was miles away on the king side. But I put my rook on the wrong square and I was lost. Luckily, though, my last remaining pawn managed to sidetrack his bishop just in time (it shouldn't have) and I was able to liquidate to a draw. Phew!!
And still the madness continued. Plaskett had queen, knight and pawn against queen and three pawns. Both kings were wide open, and regrettably the Canadian player was able to hold the draw. But then to cap it all off, our captain Ingrid Lauterbach lost right at the death with rook against rook and knight. Tragic. The upshot is that we have lost our 100% score, and tomorrow we play a German club team from Bielefeld.
Meanwhile England 1 managed a narrow win against Slovakia (more than our soccer boys could do), with Keith Arkell being the sole winner. Tomorrow they play Germany 1, who are very strong, too, and there is every likelihood they will have to play number 1 seeds Iceland at some point - hopefully putting up a more spirited show than the aforementioned soccer boys, who I think we all agree are an absolute disgrace.
So, I hope you all got the answer to yesterday's picture quiz. The man in the photo was legendary Russian GM, Evgeny Sveshnikov. Anyone who guessed Miguel Najdorf was on the right lines, but about 20 years too late.
No quiz today, but I leave you with some "action" shots of the England 1 team in action yesterday.
 |
| John Nunn and Glen Flear on their way to decisive wins |
 |
| Jon Speelman seemingly more interested in Mark Hebden's game than his own! |
No comments:
Post a Comment