Could Kenilworth B beat Stratford A, to go back to the top
of Division 2, was certainly the question last night. In the end it couldn’t
have gone much better, had it been a Midsummer Night’s Dream, as we ran out 3.5
– 0.5 winners. So that’s (nearly) enough of the terrible Shakespeare references
for one report, back to the Chess…
Stratford A have had a tough couple of years, going from
Division 1 Champions in 2011-12, through to relegation and failing to win
promotion back into Division 1 by a whisker last season. This season hasn’t
gone well for them either and despite being one of the strongest teams on paper
in the Division (and winning earlier in the week) they were still in the lower
reaches of the table. That said, any team that can field Mcnally, Doedue,
Albeniz and Henderson are always going to be competitive and the average grade
difference between them and us was a mere two points. We knew it could be tough…
Certainly an hour and half in, all the games looked very
tight, but things seemed to swing our way and we landed three wins on the top
three Boards, in a ten minute period around the time control.
I was the first to finish against Richard McNally. My game
plan had been to avoid sharp theoretical lines and opportunities for Richard to
employ any wild gambits that he was booked up on. Amazingly the plan seemed to
work and a quiet opening ensued. For the second time in a week, my game centred
on one of my pawns – this time an isolated Queen pawn. Was it strong or weak?
Richard certainly seemed to be building up some pressure on it and I sensed I
was starting to be ground down. I declined a Queen exchange, which would have
tied my remaining pieces to little more than passive defence and put my Queen
on g3, attacking Richard’s c7 pawn and setting up a few other more dynamic
possibilities. Richard chose to sacrifice the pawn (which I took) but when he
followed up by attacking my Queen with his Rook, he told me afterwards that he’d
missed my next (and best) move which was to ignore the attack on my Queen and
to attack his Queen with my Knight. What had been a quiet position a couple of
moves earlier was now on fire, with threats and counter threats all over the
Board. I had been behind on the Clock, but Richard began consuming a lot of
time and was down to four minutes against my six with the time control still 12
moves off. I offered to give back the pawn to transition into an endgame where
material would be level, but my Rook would be fixed on the 7th rank
and it was difficult to see how Richard could do anything other than passively
defend, whilst I worked out how to pick off his pawns. I doubt it was the best
line for Richard, but everything was so muddy and time so short, I can see why
he went down it. My position was very
strong, and Richard unfortunately then blundered his Knight and resigned. So 1 –
0.
On Board 2 Mike was determined to get a win over the line,
given how close he had come on Tuesday and he did a great job. Facing a reverse
Dutch, Richard Dobedue failed to get his attack going and Mike broke through on
the Queenside. Mike told me that he was well up on the lines from his work on
Chess Base (DVDs still available at a good price from Mike for anyone who is
interested I think!) and this definitely paid off. Another game that seemed to
go from being relatively quiet to Mike suddenly being won.
Phil was also flying and I think had the most brutal ending
of the three. He’d landed a fork earlier in the game and picked up a pawn and
his pieces absolutely seemed to be massing around Alberto Albeniz’s King when I
looked. Defence just seemed impossible and so it proved as Phil stormed through
to make it 3-0.
On Board 4, Dave had the better of his draw with Steve
Henderson. A 35 move closed Sicilian culminated in a complex endgame, where
Dave was a pawn up, but Steve had quite a lot of compensation via the pressure
he was exerting on the e-file. Dave felt it was probably even and agreed a
draw.
So another great night for the B team. We’re not in action again
until later in February. Will we win the League? Still some way to go, but it’s
shaping up to be one hell of a Winter’s Tale..
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