James Ovens, captain of Freight o’ the Knights, asked for a 12 pm start for this, our B team’s second match of the season, and just as well, really, because we arrived at their venue just before the rain started.
Cameron, playing Ian Mackay on board 1, managed to win a piece and never looked back. Ian played on for a while but eventually ran out of tricks and traps so resigned.
Meanwhile on board 3, Nathan, in what is probably his last game for Penrith, as he’s moving to Glasgow next week, had lost a piece to Bill Burgess. Nathan put up strong resistance but couldn’t avoid defeat.
Andy (me), board 2 against old adversary, Alan Hiatt, opened with e6 against Alan’s 1. e4. That’s right, for the first time ever, I played the black side of a French Defence but at least it avoided Alan’s Vienna Gambit. Unsurprisingly, as I didn’t really know what I was doing, we reached an unusual position for this opening, however, I did mange to get a strong pawn centre and eventually, won a pawn and a rook for knight. So now I had two rooks and 6 pawns against a rook, bishop and 5. Alan fought on and even got a bit of counterplay but after I exchanged off his rook, my rook proved stronger than his bishop and I delivered mate on move 59.
Richard against James Ovens, on board 4, was the only game remaining in play. It didn’t look good for Richard as he’d lost a rook and James had a winning position but he was also very short of time. Richard knew that all we needed to win the match was a draw and so played on and eventually James, now desperately short of time, acquiesced to a draw.
A very good win for our B team, especially as we were all playing ‘stronger’ opponents. Can we win the League? Well, so far so good 😃
League positions are shown below:
