The A team extended its 100% record to 4 games at Rugby last night with what was ultimately a clear-cut 3-1 win, but as with so many of our matches, the final score did not look likely for much of the evening. Especially when our normal "points machine", Mike, suffered a very sudden and embarrassing reverse on Board 3 against Jonathan Cox. After seemingly making all the running and pressurising Black's IQP, Mike went horrendously wrong and ended up getting checkmated by a queen on h3 and a knight on f3. Regrettably Mike's fianchettoed bishop had gone AWOL from g2 - and even a fianchettoed knight, so beloved by the Manchester School of Chess, would have been useless in repelling this particular attack.
This was a major blow, as we were not doing all that well on a couple of other boards. In particular, Joshua had played the opening in typically idiosyncratic fashion, and appeared to just be getting crushed to my untrained eye. But what do I know? Not for the first time he seemed blissfully unconcerned and just kept playing, while avoiding losing any material - though he doesn't always comply with that second condition! Somehow he was able to eke out some squares for his hitherto pathetic collection of minor and major pieces, and before you could say boo, he was two pawns up and into a rook ending! One of the extra pawns fell off, but with White's king cut off Josh was able to show fine technique and queen his last pawn.
On Board 4, Bernard C was engaged in some very strange manoeuvring against Dave Riley, which was not guaranteed to bring a warm glow to the average Match Captain. (And I fully acknowledge that I am most definitely an average Match Captain.) However, I needn't have worried as our artist in residence clearly knew what he was doing. The next time I looked he was several pawns up and despite his king looking to be in a mating net from a rook, bishop, pawn and king there was in fact no threat at all, and Bernard simply queened a pawn to win the game.
By which time I had also won on top board against Rugby's stalwart, Bob Wildig. I misplayed the opening somewhat (that's what sitting next to Joshua too many times does to you!) and came close to losing a pawn on d5 which would have spelt ruination. Thankfully the crisis passed, and with Bob rather hemmed in on his back two ranks I started to apply some pressure. His position may have been defendable, but it was very difficult, and gradually my pieces infiltrated to strong squares. In mutual time trouble, Bob had to give me a passed b pawn to avoid losing material and my active pieces were enough to shepherd this through to b8 for the win.
So a fourth straight win, and we still haven't got any of our three highest graded players to the board! And I'm not holding my breath that this state of affairs will change much, either!! So well done to those who have got us this far, especially the oft-maligned Mr Pink (we all love you really, Josh! You do know that, right?) who has run up a rather impressive 4/4 to start the season. Let's keep the run going!
I do wonder sometimes how many games I'll have to win before I actually get a positive write-up for any of my play (I'll take it even if it isn't genuine).
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