| Home Team: Bedford C | Away Team: Leighton Buzzard B | ||||||
| Board | Name | Grade | Score | Score | Name | Grade | |
| 1 | Giuseppe Valerio | 154 | 0.5 | 0.5 | Adrian Matthews | 159 | |
| 2 | Peter S Gill | 134 | 0.5 | 0.5 | Peter Taylor | 154 | |
| 3 | Richard McMorran | 130E | 0 | 1 | C Fred H Dorn | 148 | |
| 4 | Robert S Walker | 117 | 1 | 0 | Edward P (Ted) Brown | 149 | |
| 5 | Nigel B Walker | 86 | 0 | 1 | Tony Readman | 113 | |
| 2 | 3 | ||||||
| Played: 12/04/2018 | |||||||
Having drawn the away fixture I fancied a win in this match but it was not to be.
Richard had the unenviable task of tackling Fred Dorn with black. Against Richard’s modern defence Fred sacrificed (a pawn I think!). The black pawns looked as though they had been randomly scattered over the board. Richard’s Kingside came under severe pressure and he duly succumbed.
Nigel Walker’s games are often hard to judge. He seems reluctant to part with any pieces or pawns even by trading them so the board is usually heavily populated until well into the evening. I thought he was holding his own but as the pieces came off his opponent threatened to win a rook and mate simultaneously. I thought I spotted a desperate defence but Nigel assures me there was nothing he could do.
There’s not much to say about my game. I maintained a slight edge against Peter Taylor’s Alekhine’s Defence but couldn’t see a way to progress and settled for another rather tame draw. Joe soon followed apparently under the mistaken impression that we were winning.
Robert Walker was out for revenge against Ted Brown who had landed a sucker punch against him in the away fixture. Their clock had fallen off the table and when the dreaded black flag appeared on Ted’s side with nothing like 35 moves completed they didn’t believe it. Robert had tied Ted up in knots but Ted kept wriggling and I was starting to wonder what we’d have done if he didn’t make the second time control. Fortunately Ted slipped up and Robert pounced to lend the scoreline some respectability.
So we have fallen from the dizzy heights of the second division to mid table – let’s hope we can stay there in our final match against Milton Keynes C on 27 April.
Peter Gill, 14/04/2018