University's No Show Used For My Gain

Tuesday the 10th rolled around, and considering that I had nothing better to do, I decided to roll over to Heathcote Arms for two reasons:

1) To scope out the new Leicester University side and 2) To see some old friendly faces (Old and friendly used in no particular order)

Come 745pm, nobody had showed up from the University side and Raymondov, The Grinder, were amongst the familiar faces, looking forward to what was a re-match with the Uni side. I also realised that in the blog about the Leicester congress, I had said that I was looking forward to seeing the Heathcote players in a league match or two. I since realised that Wigston 5 are not in the Heathcote 2 or 3's division. (Note to self, check facts before posting).

Well, it appears that the Uni side had disappeared to Wyld-land, (coined from Haka Dave). Standing in the bar with the Grinder and Raymondov, we decided to play a friendly or two. This was after various quips about coming to see the 'Masters in action' at Heathcote.
Raymondov paired with The Grinder.

There were two faces that I wasn't familiar with (One was called Peter I think)
Peter reported that he had a text from Colin to say that the Uni had let Heathcote know at 805 that they weren't coming due to it not being the Uni's term time. Fair enough I suppose, but there must be some form of gag in there. Term-initis? Uni-itis. Nasty diseases.

A chap called Gordon showed up too, just looking for friendlies I guess, so I was paired with him.
Two games of pretty poor chess resulted in me beating Gordon twice, once as white, once as black.
Gordon was a very nice chap and was very gracious in defeat.

I then wandered over to the Raymondov vs Grinder game to see a very interesting position. Pawns in the middle, pieces developed and just as I joined, The Grinder trapped Ray's Bishop (Ray could have gotten out of it, but didn't see it) - (Like everybody else, I am brilliant when I am watching games, less than brilliant when playing them). The Grinder doubled his rooks, picked his rook up to exchange and realised that this was not as good a move as it should be. Ray created a mate threat, with a Queen in front of a Bishop and then used his Queen to proceed to check John's King with forks, removing a pawn and a Knight and John knocked his King over. (He may have wanted to pick it up and throw it across the room given that he was probably slightly better positionally).
After having a nice conversation and catch up with Ray and John, having a joke or 10 on the way, I left the Heathcote Arms feeling like I seen some friendly faces and won a chess duel.
Job done

Ben Vaughan
Wigston Chess Club