Fairly Brutal

March 17th was a busy night for the club, with three teams in action. Ben has already written about the C team's win away at Rugby, while we had a double header at the Abbey Club, with the A team playing Shirley A and the E team Shirley D. It was honours even (2-2) in the Division 3 encounter - where congratulations are due to debutant Phil Dean for securing our only win - but in the Division 1 match up, the A team dealt fairly brutally with Shirley A, finishing with a 3.5-0.5 win, which for much of the night looked sure to be 4-0. This returned us to the top of the table on game points and kept our opponents rooted to the foot of the table and facing relegation - which would have already been confirmed but for Joshua's now infamous board order blunder that converted a 3.5-0.5 win for our B team into a 0-4 loss. Shirly A now have only one match left to save themselves, against fellow strugglers Stratford A, with whom they are equal on points but with 3 more matches played. Should be quite a tense encounter between the two teams on March 31st, when nothing less than a Shirley win will give them any chance of avoiding the drop!

Last night, though, we were not in the mood for being charitable to our guests, and from quite early on it was a race to see who would win first. For all the world it looked like it would be Javier on Board 2, who took a gambitted pawn in the opening and completely dominated the game thereafter. But Jonathan Dale is never one to resign early and here he continued up to and beyond Javier queening a pawn. This delayed proceedings sufficiently for Jude to win the race to the finish line, after a really excellent game against Phil Purcell on Board 1. He seemed to play really precisely against Phil's London (yawn) set up, ending up in a completely dominant rook and bishop v rook and knight ending where several of White's pawns proved indefensible. A really convincing win against a strong opponent. 

I'm pretty sure that I played less moves than either Jude or Javier, but I was still only able to claim the bronze position on the podium after beating Gordon Christie. I ganged up on and won an advanced White e pawn in the opening and when Gordon made a two tempi losing move in the middle game I had a combo to win 2 pieces for a rook, which not long after became an extra piece. 

Which left our skipper Andrew in play on Board 4 against Dave Thomas. Every time I glanced over at the game, I was sure Andrew was about to win a piece, as Dave had an errant knight which was hopping about on c3 and b5, defended mainly by a queen on a5. Somehow, though, the knight proved to be uncatchable and the game eventually went into a rook and bishops of the same colour ending. Even when all the pawns got exchanged on the queenside and it was only 3 v 3 on the kingside White seemed to have chances, as the Black king was very uncomfortably placed on h6. But with only rooks on it was impossible for the White king to avoid checks and the position was drawn. Good defence by Dave, but it was a mighty close run thing.

Its lucky dip time on the music front this week. (Which means I can't think of anything even remotely connected to the title or theme of this report!) It might be 12 years old, but it still qualifies as modern by my standards!