In a complex position on Board 1, Rob Attar could not decide between 26…e3 or nf4. He went on to win when his opponents flag fell.
It was a top v bottom of the table clash that on paper should have proved an easy win, but with chess nothing is ever straight forward. However, in saying this Matias had not problems at all over coming his opponent and the game was over quickly with the first match point on the board for Horfield.
At this stage, the other games were far less convincing with Downend up in three and equal in the other two. Prakash had lost his queen to a rook and a couple of pawns. However, he was able to push these past pawns forward and with his opponent in time trouble missed the winning move. At this point he declined the offer of a draw and then went on to lose the match.
Nigel messed up his opening yet again and was then under what looked like a game ending attack on the king side. After a couple of hours of defensive moves and with time running out, a draw was agreed. Rob won a pawn in the opening and had a reasonable advantage for the rest of the game but was struggling to make a breakthrough. His opponent didn’t seem to be paying any attention to his clock and to his surprise his time ran out just as they had entered an endgame.
Tom had been a knight down for the second week in a row, but this time fought back to even up and quickly offered a draw knowing that it would take the team into a 3-2 lead. It was just down to Bob to claim the extra half point to win the match. Going into an evenly balanced end game, both players had less than 5 minutes on the clock. Then to everyone’s surprise Bobs opponent offered a draw and even more surprising Bob declined. However, Bob was confident that he was the calmer of the two and this proved to be the case when his opponent gave up a Bishop and pawn and then resigned to give Horfield a 4-2 win that put the team 3 points clear at the top of Division 2.
(1) Rob Attar 1 – 0 Mike Passmore
(2) Matias Perez Candelario 1 – 0 Nigel Wilcox
(3) Bob Radford 1 – 0 Richard Livermore
(4) Nigel Pollett 0.5 – 0.5 David Woodcock
(5) Prakash Chatterjee 0 – 1 Toby Kan
(6) Thomas Holmes 0.5 – 0.5 Jack Wye
HORFIELD C 4 – 2 DOWNEND D
NB: Horfield were black on boards 1, 3 and 5
Horfield & Redland Chess Club 