News from the B team's intrepid visit to Stratford-upon-Avon or, to be more precise, an industrial estate just outside Starford-Upon-Avon. I knew it wasn’t a good sign when my phone told me to get off the train at Stratford-Upon-Avon Parkway, not the nice train station in the town itself.
The first game to finish was Keatan, who had what looked
like a very aggressive game as white against Ben Larkin, with an open Sicilian
in which Keatan had pushed both b4 and c4. However, just as things were about
to get interesting, Ben offered a draw which Keaton, correctly for the match situation,
agreed to. An excellent result, if a little anti-climactic as a game.
My game against Richard McNally did at least end in a decisive result, if the game itself was quite a few levels less exciting. As black, and playing my standard d6 f5 line, we reached the following position in which, true to his style, Richard has just lunged forward with f4:
Fortunately for me, it appears that, despite how many possible ways it could go wrong, I can just take this pawn with my bishop and be a pawn up. Even with the multiple ways white can recapture, and the 3 different queen checks he can throw in at different points, nothing works, and I ended up a pawn up in a rook and knight endgame. The conversion went reasonably smoothly, and we were a point up.
For those keeping score (primarily Mark, who does love
quoting my many failures with this line) that puts me at 2/2 for the season. I
will unfortunately have white in the next game, so will need to work on some
transpositions to get back to the correct starting position.
This is the point in the evening when my very knowledge
starts to run out, as I left to catch as train. Both Mike (some c4, g5 Maroczy
bind stuff as white) and Bernard (a modern Benoni as black) seemed to have very
solid and approximately level positions, so as I left the stereotype function in
my brain assumed that both might well end as draws.
Of course, as we all know, stereotyping is a dangerous thing
to do in life, so I shall just report that both games did indeed end as draws. That
left us with a 2.5-1.5 win overall, a welcome reminder of our favourite score from
last season. Also, a rare occasion where I can take credit for the team’s win,
not blame when things go wrong.
In other (Kenilworth A) news, it is good to see my planting
of Andrew Paterson as a B team agent in that team is working as planned. Sadly,
a loss for Andy meant the A team could only draw 2-2 with Banbury, meaning that
we are currently 3 points clear of our own A team. Long it may it continue, say
I and Andy.
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