The A team's woes deepened further last night, with a rather unexpected home loss against Olton B. But maybe we should adjust expectations and accept that this season we aren't the force we have been in recent years. Olton B reinforced their usual team with Mark Cundy on Board 1, which certainly made them a more than respectable unit, but even so it was very disappointing that we couldn't even get a draw, and that the damage was done on the top two boards where we had a big advantage, grade-wise.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Carl finished first after an intended Dutch somehow ended up as a Latvian Gambit type of position against Rob Reynolds. Rob didn't disappoint and when his inevitable draw offer arrived, Carl was happy enough to shake hands and have an early night. Ben finished next, with another draw against Rob Wallman. I was hoping for more, as there was a long term threat of murder down the a1-h8 diagonal, but Ben never managed to open it up to deliver a big check mate on g7, and another relatively early conclusion occurred.
Which shouldn't have been a problem as we had a good position on Board 1 and I was simply a pawn up for nothing on Board 2. But then the wheels fell off. Andrew had a monumental rush of blood to the head and sacrificed a rook on f2. He thought it won, but unfortunately for him and us it didn't. In fact it lost. A rook is indeed a lot of material to give up if you don't get any of it back.
But surely, the Captain could do the business and at least bring home one match point by converting his extra pawn against Gary Hope? Unfortunately not. In a staggering display of incompetence he delayed an obvious sacrifice on f7 until a moment when it was not as decisive as it should have been, and then compounded the error by allowing an opposite bishops ending, and then finally screwing it up by blundering away his extra pawn. Really, you just can't get the right kind of captain these days!
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