Post date: 12-Dec-2013 22:42:22
Our trips to Witney are always challenging, and this time was no exception, despite them having a 'weakened team' with an average grade only 189!. We got off to a reasonable start with Daves Hackett and Robson agreeing to a very early "grandmaster" draw, but the situation was murkier on the other boards. Dave Keeling (now recovered from his cycling clash with a fox!) quickly found his queen subject to multiple pins. At one stage, it looked like he was going to lose very quickly to Pavel Asenov, but resourceful defence kept him in the game. Eventually he ended up in a lost rook and pawns end game. In the rapidplay finish, he left his rook en pris, and Pavel's hand moved out to take it, but at the last minute Pavel realised it was actually a cunning trap that would have led to stalemate in the middle of the board. After a moments reconsideration, Pavel instead played a pawn check, and won the game.
On the top board, Ray played the wing gambit against Marcus's French. It led to an interesting game, but Marcus eventually secured the points. Will played a stonewall against Tim Headlong, but got a passive position with Tim starting a queenside pawn avalanche. Tim broke through and gained a passed pawn, but Will eventually broke through on the king side and his two knights and queen threatening mate, or at least a perpetual check. Unfortunately for Will, Tim had it all under control, and Will resigned. Bob seemed to have a reasonable position, but a miscalculation lost material and the game. Nick was restraining Mike Truran's activity with a Maroczy Bind type of position. Unfortunately, his loose c3 knight led to the loss of his c4 pawn. Mike won the endgame, which saw the promotion of three pawns to queens.
The full match card of our 5.5 - 0.5 defeat can be found here.