| Luton | Bedford A | |||||
| Board | Name | Grade | Score | Score | Name | Grade |
| 1 | Andrew Perkins | 183 | 0 | 1 | Mindaugas Beinoras | 228 |
| 2 | Damon D’Cruz | 161 | 0 | 1 | Steven C Ledger | 194 |
| 3 | Samir Vora | 159 | 0 | 1 | James Gardner | 187 |
| 4 | Pete Montgomery | 146 | 0.5 | 0.5 | Paul F Habershon | 175 |
| 5 | Aleksandar Juhasz | 121 | 0 | 1 | Richard T Bodily | 173 |
| 0.5 | 4.5 |
Bedford A won their first points of the season with a victory at Luton. Bedford comfortably outgraded their opponents but the match was much tougher than the scoreline suggests with all games going long into the third hour of play.
First to finish was Paul, who as black v Peter Montgomery in a Reti opening quickly swapped queens and won the exchange but was unable to capitalise and in trying to simplify in a minor piece ending allowed a past rook pawn which cost him a bishop. The following exchanges resulted in a symmetrical rook and 4 pawns ending and a draw was agreed.
On board 5 as white and unusually for me I established an early advantage out of a kings pawn opening winning a pawn and maintaining it on d6. However Alexander recovered and created threats which should have enabled him to recover the d6 pawn. He spurned this in favour of an attack which never really got going. I was able to prepare a queen side attack and slightly (very) fortuitously crashed through into a winning ending.
On board 1, Mindaugas obtained a small edge v Andrew Perkins on the white side of a Queens Indian which seemed to turn into a Benoni type position. He gained both time and space and quickly established a dominant hold on the position with Andrew unable to counter in a typical good knight v bad black square bishop position. With Andrew exchanging pieces to attempt to free his position but then missing his only real chance to equalise, he felt he had to sacrifice his bishop for hope of a perpetual which Mindaugas could avoid. A solid win by the Bedford top board.
Steve was black v Damon in a symmetrical English opening, After the majority of minor pieces were exchanged, Steve had an edge with play against doubled isolated c pawns and won one of them. However Damon was able to create threats down the open files and had equalised when he moved his queen away from the main action to win a pawn on h7. Steve was able to take over the centre and exchange down to (his favourite) winning rook and pawn ending
Finally James was against Samir Vora and played the white side of a Kings Indian. After standard opening moves, James was able to advance both in the centre and on the queenside with his opponent unable to create much counterplay. James continued to press forward and black was driven so far back he had very few sensible moves, even the win of the exchange could initially be ignored in favour of a direct attack on the king. Material down and with a lost position Samir resigned, making the match score 0.5-4.5
We are now on the board and can look forward to climbing up the league in pursuit of the B team!
Richard Bodily, 12th November 2019