Match reports: B and C teams (16 and 17 March): Oops

Hmm. Two matches we expected to be tough turned out to be tough.

Firstly on Wednesday we managed to muster three players against a Cabot A side who was going to be higher graded than us. This turned out to be a mistake. Shalome, playing his first league match for us, finished first against the highly graded John; he struggled out of the opening and wasn’t able to recover. On board 4 Scott got himself cramped and wasn’t able to find a way to release the pressure on c7 on the semi-open file. Then with black’s pieces tied down in passive defence Oleksii worked an opening on the kingside to allow his king to penetrate. In the final position there was a knight sacrifice available to Scott leading to a perpetual but it wasn’t obvious and the game was conceded. The brightness of the evening was supplied by Hendrik on board 2 who beat Alan after white missed a tactic where recapturing a pawn with his bishop resulted in his queen being overworked defending both bishop and rook and black won a piece. From there Hendrik kept the material advantage and won the game.

On to Thursday we managed to field a full team versus the University B side. Possibly the best thing to say about the evening. James (F) on board 1 lost to an early blunder where he missed a queen fork and the game didn’t get any better from there. James (K) on board 4 lost quickly to better understanding of the opening, he did report (through gritted teeth) the experience will be good for him. On board 3 Owen also got caught out in the opening, dropping a pawn then struggling to find a plan to equalise. Jonas dealt competently with white’s attempts at activity and complication and picked up more material whilst trading down pieces and black conceded as the cause became hopeless. Last to finish was Piotr who secured a draw against Erasmus. It’s possible there were winning chances for black in the king and pawn endgame but they required concrete calculation and Piotr was down to his last minute so he agreed to a draw.

So two heavy defeats. As it goes. It is, so I am told, all good learning…