C team still hunting first win

Board	Rating	Bedford C	V	Milton Keynes B	Rating
1	1765	Shields, Callum TB	½ – ½	G Bowler, Andrew	1887
2	1706	Potts, AlexanderB	½ – ½	B Heath, Alan	1823
3	1562	Grimditch, JamesG	0 – 1	B Ward, George	1780
4	1295	Dairi, MahmoudG	0 – 1	G Evans, Thomas	1695
5	0821	Dairi, DaniellaG	0 – 1	B Watson, Dominic	1726
Total	7149		1 – 4		8911

I must apologise for my negligence in failing to report on the past couple of matches for the C team. In particular, I should make note of a somewhat demoralising trip to Luton last Tuesday, where a perfect storm contrived to hand us a 3-2 defeat at the hands of a team which on paper we outranked. As a result we were still searching for a first win as the runaway favourites for the second division, Milton Keynes B, came visiting. For context, their board 5 has a rated classical win over Steve Ledger – this was always going to be an uphill struggle.

Daniella’s game finished first – from what I can hear she played a solid opening and middlegame, but went down a pawn which proved to be decisive in the endgame. Having played Dominic Watson myself, he’s a tough opponent, much stronger than the other board 5s in the division. Nothing to get too disheartened about, but if Daniella sticks around she’ll be competing on level terms with such players in a few years.

James seemed to lose an exchange in the middlegame against George Ward. From there on it was always going to be tricky, George exchanged all the pieces off and converted the endgame pretty smoothly.

Callum seemed to perform solidly against Andrew Bowler, a player who I understand has made him suffer in the past. He fought Andrew to a standstill with the black pieces – as far as I’m aware this was a pretty uneventful draw – though it was a credible result against undoubtedly the single strongest player in the entire division.

This left Mahmoud on board 4 in a tussle with Thomas Evans. He’d done very well to reach a drawish endgame against a much higher-rated opponent, but as the game looked to be petering out he became cognisant of the 0.5-2.5 match score and realised he needed to press for a win to keep our hopes alive. Taking one for the team, he pushed for an advantage, overextended, and ended up on the losing side – a heartbreaker. Mahmoud seems to be one of the unluckiest players out there, his recent history seems to be a litany of “nearlies”. Surely his luck will turn sooner or later.

If the previous chat has been brief, that’s because I was thoroughly locked in against former Mastermind champion Alan Heath, in a game that went sixtysomething moves. He’d played quite aggressively in the opening with the black pieces, happily accepting doubled pawns to open lines for his rooks; however, as the position simplified this temporary advantage transformed into a long-term weakness for him. In the endgame I was able to pick up one of the weak pawns, and had a strong queenside majority. In the end Alan was forced to give up his knight to stem the tide, and I honestly wondered why he wasn’t resigning. However, I’d overlooked his ability to create a sacrificial pawn break on the kingside, loading all his eggs into one basket as our pawns raced on opposite sides of the board. When the dust settled we’d both promoted and I was left, frustratingly, with queen and knight versus queen – an easy draw. Definitely one that got away.

Honestly this match was a lot closer than the scoreline suggests! In particular both Mahmoud and I probably ought to have picked up extra half-points from our games, which would have left the scoreline a very respectable 2-3. Some encouraging signs.

Alex Potts, 16th November 2024