On board 5, Captain Nigel Pollett rolled away the queenside forcing his opponent to sacrifice material and ultimately the game
Horfield ‘C’ had a tricky away fixture away to a very strong University ‘B’ team that had just come off the back of a win against top of the table South Bristol ‘B’. The University’s digital clocks don’t handle increments so it was back to the one old time control and mistake ridden end games.
Mike got the team off to a solid start on top board. He had a slight advantage but was down on time and after an exchange that evened out the position a draw was agreed. Nigel was in control of his game all of the way through for a change and a strong queen side attack ended up with three passed pawns that were pushed forward for the win. However, at this stage we were down in three of the remaining games with only Robs game unclear. Matias had a strange game where both queen side rooks were blocked in and there was an open centre column stand off for most of the game. When the position finally opened up, his weekended King side pawn structure proved the down fall and the match was level. Bob was a piece down and the game looked lost. However, he fought back strongly and evened up then gained the advantage in the end game. Unfortunately, he ended up with a pawn on the H column that he was unable to push home for the win and the game was drawn.
Tom was battling on bravely but had been a knight down for much of the game. With time running out he finally resigned to leave the University in the driving seat. The pressure was all on Rob to maintain Horfield’s unbeaten run. With only a couple of minutes left on each clock the positions were still even, but Rob had momentum and was the calmer of the two players. He cleared the path for his pawns and with less than a minute left pushed on to gain a Queen and the game was soon won. The match was drawn and the point gained has taken Horfield ‘C’ to the top of Division 2.
(1) Luka Rimanic 0.5 – 0.5 Mike Levene
(2) Evangelos Sawotis 0 – 1 Rob Attar
(3) Ethan Luc 1 – 0 Matias Candelario
(4) Eddie Ko 0.5 – 0.5 Bob Radford
(5) Kanglan Zhuo 0 – 1 Nigel Pollett
(6) Jonathan Long 1 – 0 Tom Holmes
UNIVERSITY B 3 – 3 HORFIELD C
NB: Horfield were black on boards 2, 4 and 6
Horfield & Redland Chess Club 