There was a mass outbreak of Harry the h-pawn madness in last night's encounter between our B team and Shirley A. On 3 of the 4 boards the move h4 had appeared before you could say Jack Robinson. As early as move 5 on board 3; on move 9 on board 1 and on a rather more relaxed move 12 (or so!) on Board 2. The Ginger GM, Simon Williams, would have loved it! Interestingly, though, on only one of the three did the move h5 ever happen, which would have disappointed him greatly!
The first result of the evening came on Board 3 where Mike offered a draw to Jonathan Dale in a very complex position. And as neither of them seemingly wanted to play any more chess, the game finished when all 3 results were still possible. Immediately before this there had been excitement when Jonathan tried to make a capture with a piece that was pinned. Very luckily for him, he had no legal move with this piece, and neither could he take Mike's piece with anything else, so all he got for his illegal move was a 2 minute penalty. Followed by an immediate/concurrent draw offer.
Advantage Kenilworth soon after, when Joshua played a classic Pink game on Board 2, full of activity and bravado. Whether it was sound or not is another matter! But in the game, Owen Tompkins-Coll disastrously blocked his king's potential escape square on e7, so that when White crashed through down the open h file with a rook sac on h7. Black had to give up his queen to avoid mate and was left with just a rook against Joshua's rampant queen.
But it was back to all square when Ben went down on Board 4 against Dave Thomas. I missed the crucial phase of the game, but when I got a quick glance at the position I couldn't help noticing Ben was an exchange down - seemingly without much in the way of compensation. I imagine the extra rook soon overpowered the extra minor piece.
Leaving me to decide the match against Phil Purcell on Board 1. I was actually playing a good game and gradually imcreasing my advantage for much of the evening. Then I made a horrible move which flipped things completely and for a moment I thought I could be losing, or at best having to bale out with a perpetual. But in big time pressure Phil hesitated and I righted the ship. Play got a bit random (due to the clock) but I ended up in a queen ending with level pawns, but with the White queen and king totally tied down. I just needed to play one move with my king to put it on a non-checkable square and I would have been totally winning. But I rushed the winning idea and immediately took a loose pawn, which allowed the White queen to give a perpetual. Very annoying and very embarrassing, as I basically cost us the match victory and ruined a pretty well played game (albeit with one very dodgy intermediate phase!) Rats!
At least a 2-2 draw has got the B team on the scoreboard for the season, but this was a match where we could have hoped for better.
A bit of glorious and fantastical mayhem (in honour of Joshua's game!) to finish.
*For anyone who doesn't know, Harry's Game is the title of a brilliant, but very bleak, thriller by Gerald Seymour. Heartily recommended, but be warned - it's not exactly a barrel of laughs!
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