That Alex McFarlane is a tease:
every weekend he promises a Swiss System draw,
and then this weekend he announces before the
Saturday round that he’s operating a “sort of
Swiss System”. Maybe it’s a Scots Swiss System.
The rules of engagement were to become yet
murkier, however.
Because the ferry transporting
the young Enniscorthy team was unable to dock at
Holyhead, which resulted in a full team default,
we were threatened on the Sunday with the
possibility of “half a triangular match” – or
was it my hearing? Easy to see why there’s an
arbiter vacancy advertised on the 4NCL website;
don’t think I’ll be applying if the job’s that
complex.
Warwickshire Select 2, who
‘shaded’ us on ratings, were our opponents on
the Saturday. We ‘got off to a flier’ when John
Cooper won the exchange with a skewer and then
induced his opponent to resign under the threat
of a Philidor mate. I then evened the score
after playing an inferior opening line and being
slaughtered on the white squares. On Board six,
David, having lost the exchange, succumbed to a
kingside attack generated by his opponent’s
greater central control. Then Mike agreed a draw
following one of his ‘minimal edge’ White Queens
Pawn openings – well before the first
time-control, and so our salivary glands could
relax.
On Board 2, John Hall’s game was
by now pretty complicated. Following,
effectively, a King’s Gambit opening (having
transposed from 1.f4), John, as Black, had been
attacking the black squares whilst his opponent
challenged the white squares. After infiltrating
his opponent’s kingside, John won (?) two rooks
for a queen, but they did not co-ordinate well
with his minor pieces, and White’s active queen
and central pawn mass won the day. On Board 1,
Tom, still trying to convince the sceptics that
The London System can be a potent attacking
weapon, emerged from a middle game in which he
was at one point probably losing, to win another
fine attacking game after queening his rampant
outside passed a pawn.
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Rounds 7 & 8,
Weekend 4, 2018 |
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And so to the serious
business of the day. Unusually, we had the
luxury of an hour in the splendid Blackedge
Brewery Tap before sampling the delights of
Spice Valley, an Indian restaurant which we
thought would make a refreshing change from
our usual gastropub adventure. The Jorvik
team had eaten here the previous 4NCL
weekend and been served extremely late.
Having been served our meals very
punctually, we concluded that their mistake
must have been to betray their Yorkshire
origins. Or it could have been that the snow
made the restaurant less busy? Any smugness
on our part was soon dissipated, however,
when, after the meal, we were unable to hire
a taxi for over ninety minutes. For the
eventual taxi arrival we are indebted to the
indefatigable member of staff who eventually
pleaded with the taxi company that she had
“three elderly gentlemen” stranded far from
home. Tom and I were quite flattered, but
I’m not sure what Mike, the ‘baby’ of our
team, thought of the description, though he
is certainly a gentleman. I believe that
Jorvik, made of sterner Yorkshire stuff,
yomped back from their eating venue in a
blizzard.
Oh, yes – the chess. On
Sunday, the snow, unsurprisingly, created
mayhem, with one whole team and several
individuals having to default. Our
controllers have cool heads, however, and
not just because they choose to site their
desk in a permanent draught. The composition
of some teams was ‘tweaked’, and we were
offered the option of playing under a
reduced time limit of all moves in ninety
minutes, plus increments, if both captains
agreed - a change we agreed to with
Shropshire 1, our next formidable opponents.
If anything, they were slightly more highly
rated than our Saturday opponents, but a
close match was in prospect, and so it
turned out.
John Cooper’s game looked fairly
even out of the opening, until his opponent,
leaving his king in the centre, unleashed a
violent kingside attack whose potency was not at
first apparent, but whose power gradually became
ominously clear. Mike equalised comfortably with
his reliable Grunfeld Defence, and soon agreed a
draw. Meanwhile, the juggernaut that is Colm was
calmly demolishing his opponent’s initially
solid-looking defence. After winning a pawn in
the opening, he was forced to return it, but in
regaining the pawn, his opponent fell behind in
development to such an extent that Colm’s rooks
controlled the d and e files, and then the
seventh rank, to murderous effect. Eventually I
soaked up my opponent’s pressure and then
generated sufficient king-side counter-play for
a draw to be reasonably agreed just before the
time-control.
Again, our top two boards were
the last to finish. John Hall‘s vigorous opening
left him with over-extended pawns, and after
occupying the vacant central squares, his
opponent won a pawn to enter an ending where he
had knight and bishop against John’s bishop
pair, and ending that was never going to be easy
to win. The extra pawn did not count when pieces
were liquidated to leave opposite coloured
bishops, and John’s resilience had maintained
the level match score. Unfortunately, Tom,
having withstood a lot of early pressure on the
queenside, mounted a trademark kingside
counter-attack, which, however was not quite
good enough, and he lost after, apparently,
rejecting a winning sacrifice in time-trouble.
Our two narrow losses against
strong opposition were fair – and creditable -
results, but have lowered us towards the middle
of the table. However, having played several of
the top seeds already, we live in expectation of
victories in the final weekend at Doncaster.
In the above games you can
activate the engine analysis board by clicking
the E8 (assuming White on bottom, D1 otherwise)
shortcut square on the main chessboard.
-
explore variations by
clicking the from and to squares for the
intended move
-
click the arrow buttons to
move back/forth through the variation being
analyzed
-
click the plus button at the
right of the arrow buttons to force the
engine analysis board to auto update
following the position of the main
chessboard; this is useful for instance when
following a live broadcast; limitations:
some pages might not offer this
functionality and some browsers do not
support this functionality
-
click on the side to move
indicator to switch the side to move; this
is useful to check for threats in the given
position
-
click on the principal
variation to execute its first move on the
engine analysis board
-
click on the evaluation mark
to activate/deactivate the engine
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