After last week's glorious double triumph, this time around it was back to the usual pattern of one win and one defeat for our two teams. But with the defeat being due entirely to "friendly fire", club harmony is being sorely tested!
Kenilworth B v Coventry A
After doing the decent thing and losing badly against the A team last week, Joshua and Lionel scored 3.5/4 between them against the B team. If Stalin was in charge of the club, they would already have faced a show trial and been sentenced by now. Unlike Bernard C, who has thoughtfully adopted the Hippocratic mantra of "do no harm" and absents himself from matches between his two clubs, Messrs Pink and Riou-Durand have thrown themselves whole-heartedly into the fray and appeared against us in both Kenilworth - Coventry matches, apparently adopting the Hitlerian mantra of "do as much harm as you can". Joshua outpointed Tom 1.5-0.5 on Board 1. After a wild (who'd have guessed?) Game 1, where Tom was losing, winning, losing and then drawing, Game 2 was a catastrophe for him, and he got overwhelmed by a massive kingside assault. Lionel went half a point better and beat Will 2-0 in a very tough pairing for our man. Will has clearly been winning too many games on chess.com - or else Ben and Dave have been losing too many - since he unluckily rocketed up from Board 4 to Board 2 between team selection and match time. He made an enterprising but probably unsound piece sac with Black in Game 1, but Lionel found a precise way to unravel and won with a crushing counter attack. Game 2 was more drawn out, but Lionel just kept picking up pawns as Will couldn't get his kingside attack going. Ben finally got his season into top gear (better late than never!) by scoring 2-0 against Bava Manackam on Board 3. Reverting to that infernal London System, he got nowhere in Game 1 and was under some pressure until Bava went wrong right at the end and after walking into mate, which was not played, failed to make the most of this escape by walking into a knight fork! Game 2 was another tough battle, and another dodgy opening by Ben, but he then won a pawn with a nice tactic in a very complicated position. White missed the one move win of the exchange, though, and Ben unravelled nicely before taking over the position and winning lots of material for an excellent evening's work. But those openings, Ben!?!? On Board 4, Dave went down 0.5-1.5 to Ed (who we can't really claim as one of our own, even if he is a bit!), but with any luck this could have been 2-0 to us. As Black in Game 1, Dave had done the decent thing and completely neutralised Ed's spirit-sapping London/Jobava opening, but he got into worse time-trouble than Ed (yes, I thought that was impossible, too!) and unfortunately collapsed to defeat from a better position. Another half point slipped away in Game 2, as Dave emerged from a strange opening to get a winning kingside attack, but under time pressure again, he just couldn't deliver the knock out blow, as Ed's g6 knight single handedly kept Dave's marauding queen at bay. Final score, KCC B 3 - Coventry A 5. But this will go down in the club annals as a night of infamy!
Kenilworth A - Warwick University A
This has been a strange competition for Warwick Uni, with their B team being consistently stronger than their A team - and neither being the juggernauts of recent seasons that we have become used to - and the pattern was continued here, as we romped to a massive 7.5-0.5 win. Inevitably it was me who cost us the clean sweep! Jude was in (almost) imperious form on Board 1 against Vincenz Bill. He won a pawn with a nice tactic and seemed to be cruising to victory when for one fleeting moment the analysis bar went berserk, as Jude allowed the White queen to retreat from b7 to b1, giving check to Black's king on h7 and also attacking a Back rook on a2! Thankfully, the opportunity went unnoticed and Jude wrapped up the win shortly afterwards. Game 2 saw a big kingside attack from White and Jude crashed through to deliver mate. Mighty impressive stuff. There is no doubt who deserves to be the club's online Board 1 these days, and its certainly not anyone who is old enough to drive a car! I played a very poor game with White against Jonathan Fowler on Board 2 and was quite fortunate to keep the balance and hold the draw in a knight ending. Game 2 went much better and despite my doubled e pawns I was doing all the pressing. Eventually I won a pawn and - after a bit of faffing around - a second, before White blundered a piece in big time trouble. Andy W was back from his sabbatical on Board 3 and won two very decisive games against Thomas Parmenter. In the first, he chased the White king right up the board and half way back again, where it was mated on d5, while in the second he was always in control of the tactics and won material nicely before delivering mate again, this time with the Black king having been forced to a5. Mike completed the match with a 2-0 victory over Daniel McCorley. Game 1 was quite a struggle well into the middlegame before Mike took control, while as Black in Game 2, Mike started winning pawns quite early on and was never in trouble. At least that's what I thought until he e-mailed me afterwards with the longest list of off-board issues/catastrophes I have ever read. All in all it was a miracle he played at all, let alone won two games!
Well that's it for the A team. as its our turn for the bye next week. We will definitely finish second on 12 points, with a record of 6 wins and 2 defeats, and a board count of 40-22. Nuneaton A already have 14 points though, and may yet end up with a 100% record, which would be mighty impressive. The B team have one match to go, against Warwick Uni A, with whom they are currently in a group on 4 points in 6-9th positions. So all to play for, and lets hope we can sign off with a win.
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