Having beaten Newport’s B team at our last fixture, we knew that their A team would provide a sterner test on Friday 11th. We had the services of Ed Goodwin on top board and Matt Best on board 4, so had a pretty reasonable team ourselves. First of all, here are Matt’s comments about his game:
“I was facing Simon Maydew, against whom I always have interesting tussles (and in which Simon invariably runs his clock down to the wire!). He told me afterwards that he’d been told to prepare for 1.e4, so while initially surprised to see me playing, he thought “at least my preparation was useful”. Alas, I threw that out the window by opening with d4 (and in doing so broke the dominance of the French as the opening of choice on the night), and Simon essayed the enterprising Budapest gambit with the more respectable Ng4 line over the wild but unconvincing Ne4. A few moves in, and a move-order mix-up from Simon presented me with an opportunity to grab a Pawn. After spending a while making sure it was not a dangerous trap, I gobbled it up and then promptly retreated, with the intention of reaching an ending with the extra material. The middlegame was fairly uninteresting, really, as I pursued simplifications while Simon avoided them, and we both played pretty accurately according to the computer. However, as a mere club player mistakes inevitably happen and when looking to put on the squeeze and with Simon down to about three and a half minutes, I overlooked a bold Pawn thrust that left my Queen trapped in the middle of the board, at which point Simon offered a draw due to his time shortage. As I had around 20 minutes left, I waited for the development of the other games before deciding what to do. I was able to extract her Majesty by virtue of a Rook sacrifice, and the computer evaluation suggested a line where I grabbed a couple of Pawns for it in addition to positional compensation in the form of a frustrating pin on Black’s Knight and a very exposed King. In the end though, I followed my Captain’s advice and split the point.”
My own game against Ian Jamieson was a fairly steady draw, with most of the interest contained in lines we didn’t play. In the meantime, Ed’s game against Nick Rutter had developed into a Knight and Pawn ending, which looked fairly balanced. David had introduced complications, playing the French against Chris Lewis. On board 5, Peter was looking shaky against Danny Griffiths and was getting short of time. Given the match looked in the balance, Matt kept Simon’s draw offer open (see Matt’s comments above) while the other results clarified.
David was getting short of time but had a winning position against Chris. David held his nerve and managed to force the win, putting us ahead. Shortly after, despite pressing quite hard, Ed was forced to admit that he couldn’t make progress against Nick; a draw was still an excellent result, however. With a win and two draws in the bag, Matt knew that accepting Simon’s draw offer would at least draw us the match. Here is Peter’s description of his game:
“Without wishing to dwell too much on an off night, I was deservedly beaten by Danny Griffiths on bottom board. My first league defeat of the season, and although I almost rescued a draw while blitzing a rook and pawn ending I could have few complaints.
Our game was a French where I played 3…Nc6 (should have stuck to main lines…) in response to 3.Nc3 and Danny immediately took the game into an exchange variation by exd5.
The key moment came when Danny castled queenside and got his pawns rolling towards my king, while I decided to try stopping his play first. Bad call, never got any play going at all on the queenside.
I was positionally lost and about 25 minutes down on the clock by move 20. I’m pretty sure Danny could have won material in the complications I initiated in the centre to avoid getting squashed. I ended up a Pawn down in a Rook ending with about four minutes on my clock to his half an hour. I made him work for it, but he got over the line with just under four minutes left some point after move 60.”
So, the match was drawn, which we were pleased with. Particular credit is due to Ed and David and their games will appear on the “Interesting Games” tab.
Francis Best, A Team Captain