| Board | Home | Bedford A | Leighton Buzzard A | Away | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 (B) | 2097 | G Ledger, Stephen C | 0 – 1 | B Tukpetov, Evgeny | 2230 |
| 2 (W) | 2088 | G Gardner, James | 0 – 1 | B Sharp, John R | 2096 |
| 3 (B) | 1978 | G Habershon, Paul F | 0 – 1 | G Kenworthy, Gary | 2101 |
| 4 (W) | 1971 | B Collacott, Nick | 1 – 0 | B Law, Stephen | 2110 |
| 5 (B) | 1821 | G Dairi, Ramsey | ½ – ½ | G Williamson, Kevin J | 1881 |
| Total | 9955 | 1½ – 3½ | Total | 10418 |
Bedford A suffered our second reverse of the season as we went down to a very strong LB A Team.
As per usual, I had things to worry about myself so didn’t see a whole lot of the other games but from what I gathered :-
Kevin forced a fairly early 3-fold repetition against our young champ, who seems to be turning out for all the Bedford teams of late, whether Ramsey is now generating fear amongst his opponents or whether the position justified the repetition I know not.
I succumbed fairly feebly to Tukpetov, who always gets wheeled out against us and against whom I have a terrible record, who opted for 1. b3 this time out.
I say fairly feebly but I was quite surprised to see that my opening reply to 1. b3 was following a 2652 (who won) game but it was quite important to get black’s 10th move right, which I didn’t and was always on the back foot after that.
I think Paul’s game featured a few fireworks and Kenworthy sacc’ed something or other, which may or may not have been sound, but when I saw it Paul had lost a 2nd pawn and resigned (see below for game).
James mailed me before the match to confirm his board, presumably to attempt some prep, but it can’t have worked too well (!) or he hadn’t planned for black to meet 1.d4 with 1……e5 followed by 2. de d6 as black always seemed to have a nice position whilst James was a bit cramped and his K vulnerable. John Sharp polished him off with a couple of nice sacrifices.
It was then left to Nick to make the scoreline respectabl(ish) , as he built up a great attack against Steve Law. I thought he made a bit of a meal of converting it but it did end up with the black king being mated on e1 !! (again, see below for game)
Steve Ledger, 20th January 2024
Paul – Gary Kenworthy sacrificed unsoundly but I defended inaccurately.
Nick – I was a bit inspired by James’ game at the recent county match when he played this opening and thumped his opponent. The game wasn’t as bad as I thought immediately afterwards though I did make a meal of converting it. An entertaining assisted suicide by the black king as it took a long road from g7 to its eventual demise on e1.