A Hard Day's Night

Another week, another Warwick University team, only this time it's their A team, and even if they leave plenty of strong players at home, they can be relied on to be formidable opposition.  Who can forget them rolling us over 3-1 in the final match of last season when we only needed a draw to win the title?

But an unlikely revenge, of sorts, was taken last night when our collection of 60 somethings, plus young whippersnapper Jude, proved too good for their 4 bright young things, winning 2.5-1.5.

Bernard R was having one of his rare outings to ensure we at least had 5 eligible players for the rest of the season and was first to finish with a draw against his opponent, Marc Arnau, from Barcelona. (Who the spectating Paul naturally had a good long chat to - in Spanish, of course - after the game finished.) Apparently this was a stroke of good fortune for us, as Bernard could have lost a piece to a g5/g4 pawn push just before the draw was agreed!

For once I was not the last to finish, also sharing the point against the rather strong Viktor Stoyanov on Board 1. This was a rather exciting game - certainly by my standards - in which I sacked a piece for a couple of pawns and what I thought was sufficient pressure to win the piece back. Wrong! I had, of course, overlooked several important tactics, but luckily so had my opponent (chess is a difficult game!) and after some tense moments, when it would have been very easy for both players to go wrong, we ended up in a completely drawn rook and opposite bishops ending.

And then Mike struck what turned out to be the decisive blow, delivering checkmate on the board against his Filippino opponent, Santiago German, who had defeated Andrew Paterson last season. This had been a wild affair, but Mike always seemed to have the tactics working for him and played a very good game before finishing with a brutal kingside attack.

Which left Jude hard at work against Ivan Nikolov on Board 2. Jude also played an excellent game and was on the verge of victory, with 2 extra pawns in a rook and pawn ending. But his king was stuck on the back rank, and his queenside pawns were awkwardly placed. No doubt, though, this was a winning position, but the clock proved to be more important than anything else and with Jude down to seconds he could only make a draw. This was definitely one that got away as far as Jude was concerned, though in the overall match context it balanced out the missed win in Bernard's game.

Well, it was indeed a hard day's night, but the end result was an excellent win for KCC. There's clearly some life left in us old dogs yet. Now, if I could only think of a song to go with this post's title ........