| Home Team: Bedford D | Away Team: Leighton Buzzard B | |||||
| Board | Name | Grade | Score | Score | Name | Grade |
| 1 | Steve C Pike | 1840 | 0.5 | 0.5 | Kevin J Williamson | 1953 |
| 2 | Theo Jenkins | 1576 | 0 | 1 | Adrian Matthews | 1878 |
| 3 | Evan Lewis | 1746 | 0 | 1 | Peter Taylor | 1825 |
| 4 | Lucian Cox | 1537 | 0 | 1 | C Fred H Dorn | 1743 |
| 5 | Ramsey Dairi | 1500e | 1 | 0 | Lee Davies | |
| 1.5 | 3.5 | |||||
| Played: 03/02/22 |
Bedford D put up a spirited performance against a much higher rated team from Leighton Buzzard.
Our lucky talisman Ramsey maintained his 100% record for the team with an eventful game on board 5. Despite facing a queen and bishop battery, Ramsey moved a knight (on f6) away from the defence of h7. His opponent gleefully played Qh7? and announced “Checkmate”, only for Ramsey to take the queen with a different knight on f8! He subsequently won efficiently.
My own game against Kevin started fairly disastrously with my Queens Indian converting to a very poor French Defence by accident. After a fair amount of grovelling, I offered a pawn to try to catch-up development. Taking it would have given me good activity but would have been better for Kevin than his chosen line which resulted in lots of exchanges and an endgame where I may have been slightly better. We retired to the bar to discuss, honours even.
Lucian definitely had the best of the opening, winning the exchange which he carried into an endgame. A miscalculation concerning pawn promotion saw a reversal of fortunes and the game was lost.
Ethan seemed to play a lot of the game the exchange down, whether by design or error was unclear to me (and to him I think, when we discussed it later). Either way, he appeared to have more than compensation for it but misstepped and Peter Taylor took full advantage.
Theo was facing a very active Sicilian defence by his opponent Adrian Matthew. I’m uncertain whether the c file was open before or after Theo castled queenside but either way, it was very hard to defend once it was and he was forced to give up the exchange. Giving the exchange back, Adrian went into a king and pawn ending two pawns up which he duly converted.
All in all a good effort from a young team, all of whom (boards 2-5 anyway!) are improving week by week.
Steve Pike, 4th February 2022