We had two great matches between the Bulldogs vs Buccaneers and Bandits vs Bishops
Bulldogs vs Buccaneers
14th September
The first game to finish was board 4. Chris Spence got an excellent win against Brian Hilton so that should do him some confidence a world of good. The next game to finish was between Paul Jackson and James Schumacher. It was a tight game with James showing excellent knowledge of an obscure opening. Paul slowly started to shake his head more and more as the game went on and finally he resigned. Paul was singing James’ praises to anyone who could listen to him. It was an excellent win for James as Paul is a tricky opponent. The third game to finish was on board 1 between Steve and myself. The game quickly liquidated into an endgame with two rooks. The white passed pawn ended up being the deciding factor, though the computer was not happy with either of our endgame techniques! Finally Kieron versus Alex was the last game. Kieron turned up 20 minutes late, so his clock was already quite behind but he managed to show his strength and got the win after a tight game up until the endgame, however it was only a consolation point as Buccaneers beat the Bulldogs 3-1.
Bandits vs Bishops
14th September
Unfortunately Andrew has been very unwell the last couple of weeks and had to pull out of the game last minute. This meant Adem Avci got the automatic win. Fortunately we had a new strong guest player (sam) come visit so he got a good game against him, but it was a shame this game could not go ahead. On the other boards Dennis managed to get the win against Femi, though I didn’t get a chance to see it. Rob managed to get a win against Paul, he told me afterwards that the game was 'mad'. Finally on board 4 we had Stefan against Tony. Apparently Stefan prepared a lot of lines versus Tony only for Tony to forget the lines himself from move 2. What followed was a pawn trade and a queen trade with black losing castling rights. They both had fun playing 'out of prep' with Stefan eventually taking the win. Final result Bandits 3 - Bishops 1.