Thursday night saw our third game this week against Stockport who brought a strong team to the Navigation. As we knew they would. The bottom three boards were evenly matched, but they had three one sixty plus players at the top, none of whom played for their first team on Tuesday.
After an hour or so I heard "I didn't see that!" from the other end of the room and knew Andy had lost before he gave me the thumbs down. David was the next to fall, so 0-2. Martin was sitting next to me and his offer of a draw to Peter Taylor was initially rejected, but eventually agreed.
I was on Board 6 against Ian Anderson, having lost to his clubmate Anthony Prime on Tuesday. I've had a dismal run since June and described my form as "even worse than the English cricket and rugby teams combined". My shaky confidence wasn't helped when Ian played g6 in reply to my 1. e4 - not in my repertoire. As I like to play the King's Indian as black I decided I knew enough about it to play the white side. After a sound opening I gained space on the queen-side and managed to play sensible moves, eventually getting control and a significant advantage. Ian eventually blundered under the pressure but made me play on, probably because I only had ten minutes on the clock. He eventually resigned when completely overwhelmed.
On board 4 Alan was playing in his usual calm and cool manner and once again showed he had been in control all along. A nice win against Marc Jackson. We now had two and a half points from the bottom three games, but the match was level.
That left Terry on two against Andy Coe. Terry told me afterwards that a thirty point grading difference doesn't bother him. (It doesn't bother me either, I just don't expect to win.) Anyway, he continued his excellent form and won his game and the match.
Oh and by the way - in case you're wondering about the heading - at the point Ian resigned, Fritz has me +17. The same number of games I have lost since June!
No comments:
Post a Comment