Dhairya put up the most convincing display, making relatively short work of Aiden Keavy on Board 2. I didn't see a lot of it, but it was clear from very early on that Dhairya was overwhelmingly better on the board, and his swift conversion came as no surprise. Another terrific performance from one of our players of the season.
Dylan was the next to finish against Oliver Gray on Board 4, but it sadly just wasn't Dylan's night. Somehow Oliver seemed to find a way to fully permeate deep into Dylan's position and it looked very difficult to find a meaningful defence. Dylan gave it a good go, but not to be. There will be better nights ahead I am sure.
Paul then went down on Board 1 against Alexander Roberts. Paul's game was being played in the corner of a packed room, and as a result I did not see a single move of it. Paul told me afterwards that Alexander had played really well, and it sounded like a good tussle.
So we were 1-2 down. I was slightly better on Board 3 and Dan's position looked very unclear to me on Board 5 and we had no margin for error...
I found my defeat on Monday night very painful, but the reality is that we all lose to weaker players from time to time. All you can do is dust yourself off and try and do better in the next one. I'll still look back at this as a week when I wasn't at my best, but the cup game has certainly made me feel a bit better. I was somewhat sluggish out of the opening against Oliver Budd. A lot of material came off, and we ended up in a heavy piece late middle game, with a queen and two rooks each, which did not abound with winning chances. However, I was a little bit more active, and had potentially the more threatening pawn breaks. I was also the player who was pushing harder to make something of it.
I got into time trouble as per usual, and saw parallels with the previous night when I'd over pressed and gone wrong. But my current theory is that if you play positively, it might not always work, but the percentages are likely to favour you over the longer term. After extensive manoeuvring (of which I was quite proud) I set the pawn break up very nicely and was threatening to crash through on the kingside. I threw in a decoy tactic, which meant that if Oliver played the most logical move to block the pawn break, I'd spring a very nice trap and pick up a lot of wood. Oliver missed the tactic, and I won a rook for a pawn. Looking back at the moves now, it all looks pretty straightforward from this point on, but it was a bit nerve-wracking in the moment as I had so little time. Eventually I got the queens off, and then his rook. Oliver's pawns weren't fast enough to take on my remaining rook. So we were back to 2-2!
A big crowd gathered to watch the crucial Board 5 game between Dan and Peter Stiff. Material was level, but it was a messy position. Dan's structure was a bit compromised and he had an advanced isolated pawn that needed a fair bit of looking after. He was also very short of time. These endgame positions are very hard to play if you are not a GM, and to be fair to Peter, he did come up with some nice moves but just wasn't quite accurate enough. Also credit to Peter for turning down a draw as Stratford needed to win the game, while we only needed a draw.
Eventually, Dan managed to find a way to get his pawn chain working very effectively, and his pawns sprang into life on the queenside in a way that suddenly made them look a lot more menacing than Peter's passed central pawn. Some nice tactics followed, as Peter was forced to round up Dan's queenside pawns, which left the kingside at Dan's mercy as his doubled g pawns transformed from a weakness to an unstoppable force. A really great result - Dan's fighting qualities and his skill had got us into the final!
Details are yet to be confirmed, but it will certainly be a night to look forward to.
No comments:
Post a Comment