This was my first match as C team captain, and we showed only one change from the previous D team line up, with Andy Ward in on one, and Paul, Dhairya and me all dropping down a board. This wasn't a case of me doing an Eric Ten Hag and simply picking the players I had worked with before (with the same risks to my long-term employment prospects!?!). More the vagaries of availability on the night and the challenges we face in managing our squads. On the one hand, we were stronger than the D team which had run out 3.5- 0.5 winners. Yet on the other, Rugby (who were unchanged from that encounter) do possess two 1900+ players, so nothing could be taken for granted. Hence, we were delighted to match the D team result with another 3.5 - 0.5 win!
My own game against Christopher Badley on Board 4 was not one for the album. I was better out of the opening, but struggled to pick up the pace, and eventually found myself in time-trouble. For whatever reason, I was reluctant to play my breakout move as everything looked very double-edged. My hesitation did nothing to help my position. Christopher played the middle phase of the game very well, and despite the good coaching advice I had received from Paul Lam about minimising the risks and making things routine against weaker players, I ended up in a tactical melee that would not have looked out of place in a casino. Christopher had some good chances, but fortunately I was able to find the right tactic to eventually bring home the point. Later in the bar, the two of us enjoyed analysing it with Paul Badger and Phil Wood - one of those games that shows how rich chess really is in terms of the sheer number of possibilities to contemplate. I now just have to brace myself to plug it into Fritz to see how inaccurate we probably both were!
Unfortunately, my battle with the clock meant that I saw nothing of either Paul or Dhairya's games, but both pulled off excellent wins against Patrick Reid and Dave Riley respectively, which meant that we were 3-0 up with the match won! Irrespective of our challenges with player numbers this season, we are truly blessed to have the depth that we do.
We all gathered to watch the end of Andy's Board 1 game against the super-strong Paul Colburn. Andy was grappling to contain Paul's passed pawn, and when he had a 4 minute think which left him a minute on the clock to Paul's five, I feared the worst. However, it transpired that Andy had worked things out brilliantly. Ultimately Paul's pawn was prevented from reaching the 8th rank by a series of very skilful moves on Andy's part, and a draw ensued.
So a terrific result for the team. For all our talk of just making it through this season, whisper it, but we are second in the table with games in hand... We now have a few weeks off, before games against Olton, top of the table Shirley and Solihull to look forward to this side of Christmas. Here's hoping we build on tonight with some future festive cheer!
No comments:
Post a Comment