Golly, the summer gone in the blink of an eye. The season has started already and I’m somewhat late to the job of updating news. So three matches already:
The MKO (we are of course defending champions) started things off with our two teams drawn against each other. A close fought match saw Horfield 1 beat Horfield 2. Wins for Piotr and Graham being decisive. Details here.
Then on 9 September our first league match saw us share the spoils with South Bristol. Piotr and Scott were the game winners on the night, and a match we thought we might be winning slipped away with reverses on the bottom two boards. Details here
Finally also last Tuesday our KO team got yet enough tough away draw and weren’t able to overcome the odds against Clifton. Details here. Mike has been kind enough to provide a match report as below.
We arrived at Clifton raring to go and despite the lack of IM’s in their team we were still playing the part of plucky underdogs. Derek took on the shorter time controls and the pieces came off fast as well, with the top boards either side of him developing at a slower pace. Peter equalised with Black from the opening and then in the early middlegame Colin blundered a piece, there was some compensation but it didn’t look convincing. On the bottom four boards the games were in the balance and all double-edged; Brent’s game was all about when, not if, F5 would appear and what the damage would be.
First to finish was Derek who fell to some strong endgame play with not much time left for either player. On board 4 Colin launched a kingside pawn attack and the position became tactical with both kings under fire. Peter finished the game with a piece sacrifice leading to a forced mate. Steve and Dominic drew on 3 to keep the match tied, and Tom on 1 was ebbing towards a small endgame advantage.
The bottom boards proved our undoing however; Mike built up a good position but went for a pawn rather than a positional advantage, gave it back with hopes of pushing Duncan’s queen around but the queen stayed on course and supported a nice tactical finish. Phil and Gareth had been gearing up with latent pressure but instead of fireworks a pawn was dropped and Phil saw no way to get endgame compensation, and Rob ended up with all his pieces on the queenside, the extra pawns there not much help in saving the kingside. We had already lost the match when Brent finished off a fine game after Dave’s F5 push had gone well for him. On board 1 Tom’s win of a pawn was short-lived as the rook that took it was running out of space. Tom went for an enterprising bishop sacrifice for a second pawn – with real chances of getting the bishop back – but there was just enough counter chances to attack the king that Tom backed out of further commitments and spotted a chance for perpetual check. Michael agreed with a few seconds left, securing a 5-3 win for Clifton. It seems strange to say before the season has properly begun but, we’ll be back next year…
Horfield & Redland Chess Club 