The C team season got underway with a trip to Downend and a chance to get use to the new time increment rule. It felt good playing an opening and after 10 moves finding that you had about the same amount of time on your clock that you started with.
Brent got the team off to a good start. He quickly went a rook up but could not hang onto the trapped knight that carried out the capture. With a few pawns to the good he managed to shake off his opponents knight checks and claimed the first win. Tom played a solid and fairly even game on board 6 before gaining the advantage and claiming the win. Prakash had a knight v bishop end game but despite his knight looking slightly stronger, could not find the winning move. Eventually the game was drawn. Mike castled Queen side and then applied a lot of pressure to his opponents King side. However, it was his doubled up rooks in the centre that finally broke through and proved decisive.
With the match already in the bag in was down to Nigel and Rob to clear up the remaining points. Nigel had the advantage for most of the game and with a pawn on the 7th rank went in for the kill knowing his King was left exposed from constant checking by his opponents queen. His opponent was also in time trouble but managed to find the move that pinned the king and queen in a check that won the queen. However, Nigel was able to quickly sacrifice his rook and advance the pawn to regain his queen. After a queen exchange it became an even end game and due to the time increment rule, a draw was agreed. Rob had started off slowly but defended well and slowly turned defence into attack. His opponents King was exposed and he went in for the kill to give Horfield a very good 5-1 victory.
(1) Dominique Conterno 0 – 1 Mike Levene
(2) Ian Pickup 0 – 1 Rob Attar
(3) Andrew Munn 0 – 1 Brent Perrin
(4) James Hennefeld 0.5 – 0.5 Nigel Pollett
(5) Richard Palmer 0.5 – 0.5 Prakash Chatterjee
(6) Nigel Wilcox 0 – 1 Tom Holmes
DOWNEND C 1 – 5 HORFIELD C
NB: Horfield were black on boards 2, 4 and 6.
Horfield & Redland Chess Club 