Match Report: Horfield B vs Keynsham A (7 February): Marching on

Our march to promotion continued last night with a comprehensive victory over Keynsham.

We were aided by a default on board 6 which resulted in a shuffle up of the lower boards for Keynsham making their task even harder. Mike and John were first to finish on board 2. White had broken with his a pawn to challenge black’s knight on the b file and John trying for counter play had pushed in the centre to fork Mike’s knights but the tactical response was too slow as Mike could capture and then free one of his knights to threaten winning the exchange and create a protected passed pawn sitting on a2 which was enough for John to have seen enough and put us 2-0 up. Shortly afterwards Nigel won comfortably against Chris on board 5. Black won the white queen for a bishop on move 20 and then delivered mate on move 35. 3-0 up.

The remaining matches weren’t so clear cut. On board 1 George had restrained John’s options and squeezed the position. It really didn’t look like black had any good squares or pawn breaks and was forced into a passive defence which could only hold for so long meaning Keynsham had a point on the board. The final two matches went the distance. Rob always had a positional edge against Duncan but it took a fair amount of time to demonstrate it was winning. The end game of queen and knight vs queen and bad bishop along with a better pawn structure proved to be enough for black to win through as white’s defensive task proved too difficult. 4-1 and the match was won. Finally Jim had actively used his pieces and caused Judd a number of problems but in the end white exchanged knight for three pawns and when Judd forced queens off the board he was left with a bishop plus four pawns versus rook plus one endgame and he was comfortably able to convert.

5-1. A strong team performance and another stride towards the title. Forza.