Shrewsbury Chess club enjoyed a successful (and busy) week, with the A Team and C Team (twice!) in action. Early on in the week, Ian Davies’ C Team secured a 4-0 victory over Newport Juniors, before Newport A and C game to visit their Shrewsbury equivalents on Friday.
Newport A, the reining 1st Division and Cox Trophy champions, have the strongest team in the league on paper – meaning it was always going to be a tough task for Francis Best’s Shrewsbury A. With Jamie Hopkins taking a short break from league chess and Peter Kitchen unavailable, B team duo Matt Best and Mark Smith stepped in to fill the gap, and the availability of Ed Goodwin on board two provided a much-needed boost for Francis. Newport, meanwhile, were able to boast of a full-strength side, with the first, third and ninth ranked players in the county on their top three boards. They had a grading advantage on four of the five boards, with the on board on which the hosts had an edge being by a mere two points. The average grade of the Newport line-up was 170 (higher than any Shrewsbury player on the night), whereas for Shrewsbury it was 154. Hopefully, you kind of get where I’m going with this.
All 5 boards went on for some time, but eventually, the first game to finish was the top-board battle between Nick Rutter, the highest rated player in the county, and Francis. Nick had responded to Francis’ hyper-accelerated Dragon set up with a Maróczy Bind, which can often lead to passive, cramped positions for Black if he doesn’t play it fully accurately. Indeed, this was what happened, with Francis left defending tenaciously but with minimal prospects of counterplay. At the end, he had a pair of rooks in exchange for Nick’s Queen. Whilst this is often better for the rook pair, in this case they were separated and inactive, whereas the Queen was powerfully-placed and dynamic. It was, therefore, inevitable that the Queen would penetrate Black’s position, and ultimately forked Francis’ King with one of his Rooks, leading to a clearly lost position.
Almost immediately after, the next game finished. On board 4, Matt was facing Simon Maydew for the second time this season (the previous encounter being a quick draw on top board of the Shrewsbury B – Newport B game). It was slightly more interesting than the previous encounter, with Matt responding to Simon’s Scandinavian with opposite flank castling. Matt offered a Pawn sacrifice on b4, which was not entirely sound but needed incredibly precise over-the-board play from Black to avoid a hopelessly lost position. Justifiably, Simon declined the sacrifice at the expense of giving Matt the initiative, but he was able to hold off the pawn storm and finally develop his Kingside Knight and Bishop, which were still on their original squares. As the position looked increasingly drawish, Matt sped up his moves to gain an advantage on the clock, but at the expense of a sub-optimal position. However, his strategy proved worthwhile as Simon went into his last five minutes (at which point Matt had over ten minutes left) with a marginally better position, but plenty of pieces remaining on the board. Simon offered a draw, which Matt accepted after a quick check of the remaining three boards.
This did put the pressure on the hosts, who needed at least 2/3 to come away with anything from the match. However, they rapidly got halfway there courtesy of Ed’s superb win over Gavyn Cooper, where his massive advantage on the clock had diminished in favour of one on the board, where he was up the exchange with a more active position. As Gavyn entered his last minute and Ed his last three, Ed was able to find the crucial mating combination with his two rooks ably supported by a pawn. Level pegging.
Next up was an engaging tussle on board three between David Everington and Nathanael Paul. The game is available for viewing on the interesting games page complete with annotations from David (and one or two from me, where labelled) and so I won’t go into too much detail, other than to say that David had an edge in the middlegame, before Nathanael got an ending advantage only for the position to peter out to being level. Then, however, David got a won endgame, but with both players down to less than two minutes, he missed the crucial line, leading to a drawn Rook vs Pawn endgame. 2-2, with one game left to decide the match.
In a scenario almost as tense as the massive shoot-out in Django Unchained, Chris Lewis and Mark’s game on 5 had slightly longer to run than the other boards due to starting slightly later, so that both players had a little over three minutes left by the time all the others had finished. Mark had gone from a difficult, passive position tied down to defending to a more expansive won, opening Chris’s King’s position, and then to a won one (try not to say that aloud too quickly) with a Queen against Rook and a sufficiently large number of Pawns for the Queen to have a trivial win, sealing a massive victory which returns the A-team to the top of the first Division, underlining their title credentials firmly.
The other match finished slightly earlier, but in no less dramatic fashion. After Eric Inglis lost to Steve Cooper on board three, Andrew Lewis and Ian both drew on the top two boards, requiring a victory by Tony Purser on board 5 to rescue the match. Thankfully, Tony duly obliged and the spoils were shared, ensuring all three divisions remain incredibly tight.
Shrewsbury C 4-0 Newport Juniors
- I. Davies 1-0 D. Holmes
- A. Lewis 1-0 E. Maydew
- A. Purser 1-0 Z. Maydew
- F. Harris 1-0 B. Hudson
Shrewsbury A 3-2 Newport A
- F. Best 0-1 N. Rutter
- E. Goodwin 1-0 G. Cooper
- D. Everington ½-½ N. Paul
- M. Best ½-½ S. Maydew
- M. Smith 1-0 C. Lewis
Shrewsbury C 2-2 Newport C
- I. Davies ½-½ P. Broderick
- A. Lewis ½-½ D. Lovegrove
- E. Inglis 0-1 S. Cooper
- A. Purser 1-0 W. Gormley