A truly disastrous night for us in our first home game of the Coventry League season. Mark was away, but equally Rugby were missing Bob, so the teams were reasonably matched on paper. If not the sixty four squares when the action got under way. None of the clocks were properly set and it took a combined effort by both teams to fix this. Perhaps this was an omen. As the night went on, things certainly did not improve...
Mike's position against Dave Phillips on board one always looked very difficult. David had queen and knight threatening to mate on h7, and David's game plan consisted of finding a way to kick out Mike's defending knight on f6. Eventually he did and that was that. On board four, Dave Shurrock was playing Alan Phillips and seemed to be winning for most of the evening. However, while up an exchange it was far from easy. At least Dave earned what proved to be our sole half point.
On two and three, bizarrely, Drago and I ended up with similar looking positions (me against Jonathan Cox, Drago against Simon Turner.) We both reached heavy piece endings with two knights against two bishops. My position was always harder to play than Jonathan's even if not actually losing for most of the night. Drago's position was probably a little better, but the power of the bishop pair on both boards was plain to see. Both games went to the wire and on another night, we probably would have got something from the two games - albeit not enough to make a difference. As it was, we both lost.
So we went down 3.5 - 0.5. Sorry Mark. At least the clocks are now on the right setting for next time, so that's a positive! We've also amply demonstrated the strength of the bishops, which I suppose is something, even if they were our opponents bishops... We'll try and put things right next time.
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