U1 vs Args

A journey to Staplefield to the Jolly Tanners pub to play the Args.  They have changed the layout in their match room and it is significantly more comfortable than it was.  Not that the final result was, but there was more to it than that.

Chaski on Board 1 played an old foe, Peter Farr and it was a Modern Benoni where Chaski fianchettoed his kings bishop.  He looked to have some advantage, but looking over at the board from where I was sitting it was a complete mess.  As this was one of the last games to finish I had the pleasure of watching an extremely interesting endgame, full of pins and little tactics, I really enjoyed it...and the game ended as a draw.

Mark on Board 2 was the black side of a Kings Indian Attack, something I dont think I've played against before.  It was pretty level with Tim Pavlovic, my opponent trying to set up a kings side attack.  I focused on swapping off his powerful light squared bishop, but at the cost of doubled isolated pawns, for which I thought I'd gain a lot of play against his queenside. Sadly I had missed a fairly obvious resource and the game settled down to some manoeuvring with neither of us looking likely to make progress.  I was offered and accepted a draw, a result I was quite pleased with as I thought I was the one under pressure.

Simon on 3 played Jim Graham, who he had played in the knockout competition earlier this year....and with the same result, a defeat unfortunately, though he did get back into the game later on, it wasn't enough.

Michael's gane looked reasonably balanced but he was a pawn up in a double rook endgame.  HIs opponent had very active rooks and personally I thought Michael was was probably losing when he was offered a draw.  In light of the match position Michael played on but did go down in the end as his opponent mopped up his pawns.

Brian was subjected to an attack on his king, but successfully fought it off and ended up in a rook and pawn endgame in which he was probably better and atleast drawing.  One false step in these and you can lose, which is what happened.  A couple of hours of good play and one bad move.

So we lost 4-1, but it could have been much closer than that and even if we lost our performance was encouraging against probably the favourites to win the division, unbeaten now after 5 matches.  We wish them all the best, especially since we find ourselves last in a very tight fight at the bottom and they can do us a favour by beating our closest rivals.