And Then There Were Two

For the gazillionth time this season the A team vaulted over the B team and returned to the top of Division 1 after a 3.5-0.5 win over Solihull A on Monday night. Its fair to say that we fielded a very strong team while our opponents, sitting unusually low in the table, were clearly missing some players. Nevertheless, we've seen in the past that rating gaps seldom convert that smoothly into victories, but on this occasion there were not too many alarms along the way.

Javi scored a very convincing win over Ray Carpenter on Board 2. Ray went wrong in the opening and Javi simply won a pawn with an overwhelming position. In no time at all he was three pawns up, and as these were 3 connected and passed pawns the result was never in doubt.  Bruce was next to finish against Tony Sadler on Board 3. I only looked at this game twice - the first time, Bruce was a pawn up and the second he had added an exchange. Plus he had all the play against White's long-castled king. Andrew - more at home on Board 1 for the B team - found himself on Board 4 against a very promising Solihull junior Akshath Shivakumar, who has already made a winning 4NCL debut for Warwickshire Select 2 in Division 3 of the 4NCL. Paul will have to check his records and see if Akshath has broken Jude's record (or is it Billy's?) for the youngest player in Division 1 of the LDCL. Andrew seemed to get a very big plus in the opening, and landed a monster knight on e6 where it was forking 2 Black rooks. He had to be careful about his king safety, as his fianchettoed light squared bishop had disappeared, but he avoided the potential banana skins and wrapped up the victory soon after.

But things had gone less smoothly on Board 1, where Jude had not found a great set-up against Don Mason's slightly innocuous opening set-up, and was soon in some difficulties. He tried to tactic his way out of the problems, but Black had too many loose pieces, and as we all know Loose Pieces Drop Off. But just as one of them was about to, Don offered Jude a draw because he was already in serious time trouble. Jude, being in a lost position, could hardly decline, and was probably very relieved toi take home a half point.

The upshot of this latest A team win is that the Division 1 champions will definitely come from Kenilworth - its just a question of whether it will be the A or B team that gets the trophy.

LDCL League Table as at 05/03/24. Pleasant reading if you are from Kenilworth!

So, to paraphrase a Little Feat song, "Now there's 2 trains running on that line, One train's the A team and the other's some friends of mine."