Another week - another unimaginatively titled blog post.
This week we were at home to Shirley A and, even though they did not bring a full strength team, the match was a close one all the way through. It should also be noted that I arrived fashionably/27 minutes late for my game, so all comments on other boards should be viewed through the prism of my not having seen what went on.
The first game to finish was Mike, who won a nice looking game on the black side of a Benoni/Benko (I believe Mike said afterwards it is the first time he has ever played this line). Mike delayed playing the b5 Benko sacrifice for a number of moves, but even so when he did play it, it immediately caused Dave Thomas no end of classic Benko problems. It took Mike a while to finally cash in his advantage, but for a long-time Dave seemed to be desperately staving off catastrophe with every move, until finally it could be staved no longer.
We held the lead for approximately 3.5 seconds before Andrew resigned, going down in flames against Phil Purcell on board 1. Andy played some version of a Stonewall Dutch, and there really isn't much to say other than he seemed to get absolutely hacked to pieces, with a passed white c pawn costing Andy a whole piece and the game. I think the most positive thing that can be said about this one is because Andy delayed resigning for a few moves past the point where it was probably warranted, it did at least mean that technically we were never behind on the scoreboard at any point in the match.
Next up was Harry, who I think played 2/3 of a very good game against Darren Whitmore. I'm reasonably confident it wasn't a 1. b4 opening, but it certainly ended up in a 1.b4 like position, with a white pawn ending up first on b5, then on b6, clamping down on the black queenside. It looked like very good strategic play, up until the point Harry decided strategy was boring and went for a massive queenside hack, castled queenside (where, as I have already noted, his b pawn is on b6) and blasted open the center of the board. It looked like the position was in danger of turning around, but fortunately Harry then came in with a very cleverly timed (and accepted) draw offer, before things got out of hand.
That left things level after 3 completed games, with just the B teams star player left to finish, playing against Marcus Walsh. Fortunately, things had gone relatively well so far in this game, with some fairly pointless and random maneuvering on the white side of a Sicilian, combined with one flashy but ultimately pointless tactic, eventually leading down to a position where i was able to play a couple of pawns and transition into a queen endgame, as follows:
The primary issue at this point was both players were now down to playing on the increment, with one of them very much wishing he could have his 27 minutes back. The secondary issue is that whilst I am sure the position is objectively winning, the process to win it (involving pushing pawns and supporting them with the king) is exactly the same one as is likely to lead to bumbling into a perpetual check. Fortunately, 7 or 8,000 checks later, black eventually misplayed the position and was unable to block white from promoting the b pawn, and another glorious, well deserved, and in no way random victory was achieved. In a statistic which most certainly does not reflect the low quality of my recent play, this marks the first time I have won 2 games of chess in a row since the British Championship in July.
Still, back to the top of the table we go, with a somewhat unusual +4 match score with only a +3 game point difference, and this series most likely comes to an end, given our next match is against a full strength Kenilworth A team.
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