| Home Team: Milton Keynes B | Away Team: Bedford A | ||||||
| Board | Name | Grade | Score | Score | Name | Grade | |
| 1 | Richard CP Freeman | 177 | 0.5 | 0.5 | Steven C Ledger | 190 | |
| 2 | Francesca Matta | 172 | 1 | 0 | Michael T Botteley | 178 | |
| 3 | Peter C Clarke | 170 | 0.5 | 0.5 | Paul F Habershon | 177 | |
| 4 | Phillip Ekhaesomi | 165 | 1 | 0 | Andrew J Chapman | 175 | |
| 5 | Robert Whiteside | 164 | 1 | 0 | def | ||
| 4 | 1 | ||||||
| Played: 11/01/18 | |||||||
No new year relief for what must be Bedford A’s worst ever start to a season. We have yet to win a match and we’re at the halfway point.
The evening started badly when James Gardner, untypically, forgot the fixture and defaulted. It was some perverse consolation that even if he’d turned up and won we would still have lost the match.
In the other lost games Mike and Andy never quite had enough compensation for an exchange sacrifice and lost piece respectively. Even in my drawn game I was largely on the back foot in an opening that Peter Clarke (Black) knew more about than I did (1 e4 d6 2 d4 Nf6 3 Nc3 e5 4 dxe5 dxe5 5 Qxd8+ Kxd8….).
Steve reached an ending with R + g and f pawns v R and g pawn, but Richard Freeman easily held on to draw.
Our next match is v Bedford B on Feb. 15th and I think the bookies have the B Team as favourites. I’m lucky not to be a Premiership football manager.
Paul Habershon, 12th january 2018
Funnily enough, there’s a rumour that a Mr Mourinho was seen looking around the building this week…