My game against Sam Cotterill was, not unusually, the first one to finish. It ended rather abruptly as a contest on move 16, with white to play in the position below.
Black has just played Qd8-Qe8 to break the pin along the d file, and try and deal with the currently uncapturable bishop on g5. Unfortunately, this seems to lose immediately, after a trade of bishops and Qb7.
Suddenly, with Ne5 to follow and no way to break the new and worse pin, black is losing material and the game. After I played an incredibly boring Colle System opening to reach that position, I may have discovered something no-one else has thought of in chess history – if you play sound openings and positions, tactics often work out in your favour. I’m sure it won’t last, but I feel good to have had an entirely original chess idea.
Andrew Paterson was playing with against Ben Larkin, and they reached a to me slightly confusing position. Basically, it was normal-ish Queen’s pawn position, but black for no clear reason had pushed his a pawn all the way to a3. For quite some time it looked like that pawn should just drop off, but it never did, and became more and more of a thorn in Andrew’s position. Eventually he decided to sacrifice a rook, for tactical compensation that unfortunately did not exist. He ended up with three pawns for a piece, but unfortunately Ben’s remaining queen and bishop were able to whip up some very nasty threats against Andrew’s king, so down he went. 1-1 for the match.
Andy Baruch was next to finish, with a very nice win with the black pieces against Richard McNally. Andy played a slightly off-beat and slow double fianchetto as black, which was an excellent choice as it prevented Richard from launching his trademark sacrificial attacks. In a slow manoeuvring position, Andy was always on topic, obtaining a good knight against a bad bishop, winning a pawn, and winning the game. The endgame a protected passed pawn up took longer to win than I had expected, but result was never in much doubt. 2-1 and looking good thus far.
Mike, meanwhile, was paying the black side of a Benoni against a new Stratford recruit, Alex Roberts. White played in a trademark Benoni style, playing 35 and building up some scary pawns in the centre. Mike, by contrast, instead of the standard Benoni queenside counterplay, managed to end up with double, isolated, passed d pawns – not something you see very often. Unfortunately, white’s more active pieces started to take over the game, and Mike was soon very much on the back foot and short on time, with pawns starting to drop off. Just as I was resigning myself to a drawn match however, his opponent got overexcited, pushed his king forward too quickly, and Mike was able to arrange a perpetual check to win us the match. He may even have had more, but I for one am very happy with Mike for taking the draw to win the match at this point.
However, no-one really cares about the games; what we care about is this table.
8 wins in the season, and 7 of those by a 2.5-1.5 margin. It also means if our A team starts to lose some matches, we could yet end up winning the league. By coincidence, I happen to have been roped in to play for our A team against Banbury this Thursday. For some unaccountable reason, I just have this nagging feeling that I might not play very well in that match.
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