On Board 2, stand in replacement Jon Fisher demonstrated how to play 24 awful moves and then draw due to your opponent being in time trouble. A quick shake of hands in the final position sealed an important half point for Horfield C.
It was the penultimate away match for Horfield ‘C’ against a Thornbury that have gradually been improving during the season.
Jon’s opponent turned up late and then decided to change the board and pieces. This seemed to unsettle Jon who got off to a bad start and was under pressure from early on. Rob had a strong King side attack against Lynda and soon went a piece up. Tom was also a pawn up on board 6 and Prakash had gone a rook to Knight up in his game. Bob’s defence had been opened up from early on but he had lot of counter play options, however, it was Nigel who finished first when he reached a position where the obvious move was a repetition. A draw was agreed as any other move would have proved weaker for either side.
Soon after Bob agreed a draw, based on the status of our other boards, in a game that could have gone either way if he had risked an attack. Jon, who had been soaking up the pressure all night was well ahead on time and with his opponent down to his final 5 minutes and with no obvious way to break through agreed a draw.
At this stage it was looking good for Horfield who had a slight advantage in the remaining 3 games. However, things soon turned around. In both Rob’s and Prakash’s games their opponents had joined past pawns in the centre of the board that proved difficult to stop despite their own pawn advantages.
Prakash managed to queen first but his opponent queened straight afterwards with a check which turn into a perpetual and a draw was agreed. Rob’s game had turned around when his king became isolated and he could not find a way to force his own pawn on the seventh rank home. One of Lynda’s centre pawns had advanced to the 7th and just before she turned it into a queen, Rob resigned.
It was down to Tom to save the day for Horfield, which he did with style by protecting his pawn advantage and then with advancing past pawns on both sides of the board forced his opponent to resign and the match was drawn 3-3.
(1) Lynda Smith 1 – 0 Rob Attar
(2) David Vaughn 0.5 – 0.5 Jon Fisher
(3) Dave Dugdale 0.5 – 0.5 Bob Radford
(4) Andrew Borkowski 0.5 – 0.5 Nigel Polett
(5) Ian Sandford 0.5 – 0.5 Prakash Chatterjee
(6) Chris Smith 0 – 1 Tom Holmes
THORNBURY 3 – 3 HORFIELD C
NB: Horfield were black on boards 2, 4 and 6.
Horfield & Redland Chess Club 