The A team's final pre-Xmas match saw Leamington A visit the Abbey Club. Or at least 75% of Leamington A visited, the other 25% defaulting, which was a shame for Andy B who was making one of his periodic appearances. And I felt bad about it too, as I had promoted him to Board 2 above me so that he could have White, only for him to end up playing just the one move, while I got a proper game on Board 3. There was actually a strange parallel to Andy's "game", which went 1 g3 1-0, as at the Sunway Sitges Open, on the very same day, the "game" between Natanel Levi (2179) and Amin Tabatabaei (2660) went 1 g4 1-0. Joshua would no doubt claim that the Grob is so strong that it was quite sensible of Tabatabaei to resign instantly upon seeing the move, but I suspect that the sudden end may have more to do with the nationalities of the players (Israeli and Iranian if you hadn't guessed).
And talking of Joshua, he delivered our second point of the evening, when capitalising on about 4 extra pawns against Jon Griffiths in a rook ending. It was quite amusing from my viewpoint alongside him, to see him spend three or four moves setting up a knight sac on e6 (which just won 2 pawns instantly) while Jon steadfastly refused to make any of several moves which could have completely disarmed the tactic. Less amusing, though, was when they both went into Blitz mode at the end, while some of us (and yes I do mean me) were trying to play a serious game right next to them.
I wrapped up the win by beating Andy Collins on Board 3. He sacked an exchange to try and escape a rather nasty pin, but although the engine said he had some compensation, it could hardly have been enough. And it was all academic anyway, as he almost immediately blundered a counter exchange sac which won a whole piece and a pawn to boot.
Jude then rounded the evening off with another win, after playing a much better line against Tom Darling's Morra Gambit than he had adopted against Francis Sagyaman a couple of weeks earlier! Which meant we had won 4-0, and reached the near half way point of the League (near, as both our matches v Solihull will be after Xmas) without suffering a single individual defeat, and averaging 3.5-0.5 in our six matches to date. Surprisingly, this has only been enough to get us a 1 point advantage over Stratford A, plus a game in hand. We do, however, have a 7 points better game points difference as an added buffer.
But enough of numbers and points and everyday stuff like that. Let's finish on a seasonal note. "White Christmas" by Bing Crosby? I hear you ask. Don't be silly - it's Bruce, of course!!
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