Gordon Reports:
Saturday February 16th 2013.
Nottinghamshire v Leicestershire
I arrived at Ray’s
house at the time arranged where Ray had the car doors open ready for the
off. I got into the passenger seat and
to my surprise Drew opened the back door and entered.
Ray handed me a sat
nav and a piece of paper with a post code written on it. I asked him if he had
an address he said that the post code is all he had, “It is somewhere near a
church”, he said. Being technically useless I managed to switch the sat nav on
and then handed it to Drew to enter the post code details.
As we made our way
up the M1 Ray did say that it was in Bramcote. “Well that cuts it down a bit “,
I sarcastically retorted, Ray just laughed.
We found the venue,
a community hall, (so much for the church).
I was pleased to see a number of chess players whom we have met while
playing in the league.
My game (with my
reasoning up to where I fluffed it) was against Colin Smith I played white:
1.e4 d5 2. d3
d4 3.g3 e5 4.f4 Nc6 5. a3 Nf6 6. Nf3 Bg4 A nice safe opening 7. h3 to chase away his bishop
Bxf3 8. Qxf3 My queen is out early but in
a good position? exf4 9. gxf4 rather than queen takes as he may pressure my queen with Nh5. Qd7 Preparing
to castle queensside. 10. Bg2 with a threat on that diagonal hoping to
move e5 0-0-0 . He castled on the
queensside making my queen and bishop diagonal
a stronger threat. It also makes it easier to bring his rooks
together. 11. 0-0 I castled to move my king off the e-file to avoid a possible
threat from his rook h5 another
threat on g4. 12. f5 My thinking here
was to weaken his knight move to g4, not seeing his next move threatening my
queen Ne5. 13. Qe2 This
was okay the pawn on the f-file was protected as well as the pawn on the e-file
with the queen still on a white diagonal to get into a threatening position. It
also opened the white diagonal for an indirect threat on b7. Be7
bringing his rooks together into play on the eighth rank and another possible
threat on g4 .14. Nd2 I was now chasing his knight on e5 to make
way for my pawn to move to e5 opening the threat to b7 g5 I considered en passant but could not work
out any advantage? 15. Nc4 Nxc4 A knight exchange, even on material but
opening the diagonal to my advantage. 16. dxc4
Bc5 An indirect threat on my king and
more pressure on g4. 17. Qd3 to stop a discovered check with d3 slightly weakening g4 Rdg8 he now wants
to move in for the kill?. 18. e5 a threat on his knight with only one safe
move Ne8. 19. b4 to move his bishop and make way for my queen
Be7. 20. f6 an extra little push, opens the diagonal for his queen to attack g4
again but also opens it up for me and blocks his king after Bd8.
21. c5 h4. 22. Bb2 g4. 23. Qe4 threatening check Qc6. 24. Qf5+ Qd7 and this is where I messed all my hard work up, instead of playing
Bxb7+ and winning. 25. Qe4 c6
I played on but
went a piece down in the end game then my king was slowly pushed back, I
therefore resigned.
I didn’t see the
games that Drew and Ray played but talking to them on the way home, Drew had a
game which suited his style of play and he soon made short work of his opponent
(didn’t get his name) cornering him into check mating himself? Well done Drew.
Ray took full
advantage of the time allowed; he was drawn against one of the few strong lady
chess players. He told me he sacrificed two pieces for one forcing his opponent
into doubling up on one of her pawns which he judged to give him an advantage
in the end game. He did take two more pawns for that extra piece and accepted
the ladies resignation like the gentleman he is. Well done Ray.
Gordon
