Vital Victory – authored by Nick B team Captain
Such was the importance of winning this match against fellow strugglers, Winwick I sought to field the strongest permissible team to not only win it, but also to win it by a distance. Thanks to everyone being available I was able to do just that, and thanks to some excellent incisive chess by the whole team we won by the greatest distance possible. By contrast, Winwick could not field their two strongest players so we outgraded them by an average of 200 points per board – that’s a very wide margin at this level.
And so to the games:
The first game to end was Keith Maudsley’s encounter with the Winwick captain, Mike Fleming. If you play the Sicilian Defence as Black these days you need to have something in your repertoire to deal with Alapin’s 2.c3 which has gained immensely in popularity in recent years. Unsurprisingly Keith was well armed for this variation and achieved equality very quickly and then gained the initiative with a subtle Queen manouevre coupled with some energetic pawn thrusts. On the back foot, Mike overlooked a Knight fork which won a whole Rook and resigned a few moves later. 1-0
You know you’ve got a strong team when the likes of Andy Coe are playing on bottom board. The opening was a symmetrical English in which Black elected not to exchange a pair of Knights on d4 thus remaining slightly cramped. Andy built up pressure along the d-file and following exchanges saddled Black with doubled f-pawns and an isolated d-pawn which was extremely weak. This pawn weakness essentially cost Black the game because in trying not to lose it he blundered a rook. 2-0
Ilya Dubov’s game against Dave Stuttard on Board 2 was perhaps the quirkiest of the evening. Dave is a naturally attacking player who is prepared to take risks to get his opponents out of their comfort zone and this style of play was evident in his opening pawn gambit against Ilya’s Caro-Kann set up. This gambit really did not look sound, but it looked positively sensible compared to the exchange sacrifice which he played in the early part of the middlegame which gave him attacking opportunities along the h-file. However, the attack was very easily repulsed by Ilya and after the Queens came off the endgame was R + 5 pawns v Knight + 4. There were still a few tricks and traps to be navigated and on his own admission Ilya could have played this phase a little better, but enough is as good as a feast and he secured the point (and, more importantly from my perspective, the match). 3-0
On Board 3 Tom Vout could have done with a quick win against Ken Johnson because he had to be in London first thing for an important business meeting and was booked on a train at the rather unattractive hour of 05.57! However, players as experienced as Ken do not tend to concede easy victories to anyone and so it was on this occasion. Tom built up a very promising position using his favourite Grand Prix system against the Sicilian Defence and his thematic pawn advance f5 was particularly effective because not only did it ‘attack’ Black’s pawn on g6, but also his Bishop on e6 which had no flight squares. So Ken was forced to play gxf5 shattering his K-side defences. Tom set about probing Black’s K-side weaknesses with his Queen and Knight whilst his doubled Rooks on the e-file were a serious menace. Ironically Ken’s first (and only) aggressive incursion into Tom’s position, Qa2, simply cost him a Knight and shortly afterwards, the game. 4-0
By contrast to Andy Coe’s game, the English opening by Rob Furness against Richard Clissold on Board 1 was anything but symmetrical. Rob described it to me afterwards as his ‘anti-stodge’ system in which he felt he was hanging on by the skin of his teeth for much of the game. Knights relying on each other for protection are notoriously vulnerable and Rob had to be on his guard to prevent Richard being able to bag both Knights for a Rook. However, by clever manouevering Rob’s Knights finally became pillars of strength and infiltrated deep into Black’s position. Desperately short of time, Richard went astray as the Knights escorted Rob’s a-pawn towards its queening square and he resigned in a hopeless position. 5-0
This victory lifted us off the foot of the table and two points clear of Winwick with a far superior points difference. Whilst this does not guarantee safety it does mean that I shall be able to offer opportunities to play for the Mighty Bees to lower graded players in our remaining matches, none of which are easy.
