| Home Team: Bedford C | Away Team: Bedford D | ||||||
| Board | Name | Grade | Score | Score | Name | Grade | |
| 1 | Giuseppe Valerio | 154 | 1 | 0 | John J Harbour | 138 | |
| 2 | Richard McMorran | 130E | 0.5 | 0.5 | Callum T Shields | ||
| 3 | J Nigel Staddon | 122 | 1 | 0 | Ben Cox | 129 | |
| 4 | Robert S Walker | 117 | 1 | 0 | Robin Pound | 91 | |
| 5 | Diego Alvarez Merino | 64 | 0 | 1 | Toby Cox | 112 | |
| 3.5 | 1.5 | ||||||
| Played: 19/10/2017 | |||||||
Peter narrates the story of an interesting evening:-
The C & D teams kicked off the season by playing each other. It was a story of ancient and modern with only Diego pulling the average age of the C Team below 60 and Captain John pretty much as old as the rest of his team put together.
Robert stationed a mighty Knight on d5 and when Robin lashed out with an ill advised pawn thrust the Knight and its Queen seized the chance of a brutal mate.
On the next board Ben was giving over 70 years to the wily Nigel. I didn’t see how he did it but he forked Ben’s Rooks to win the exchange and then reached a comfortable ending a full piece to the good.
Diego was determined to aim his rooks at Toby’ s King when they might have been better employed defending Toby’s Queenside attack which netted first a pawn and then the game.
I thought Richard was going to be crushed by Callum’s pawn steamroller but Richard assures me he was well placed all along and sure enough after appearing to cower behind their comrades for most of the game his Rooks went for Callum’s King and gave Richard some hopes of a mate before a draw was agreed.
That left the top Board where my impression was that Joe was in trouble when he went the exchange and (I think) a pawn down. What do I know! It was as if John had prodded a sleeping tiger! In winning the material John had ceded the initiative and Joe’s moves seemed to play themselves until he regained the exchange and then went an exchange up with an easily won ending. There was an issue about recording moves which left the result unclear for a while but that has now been resolved.
[Rule clarification from Adrian Elwin (league chairman) – You do not have to record moves in the last 5 minutes unless the increment is 30 seconds or more, so in the Beds League players can stop when below 5 minutes. Once a player has dropped below 5 minutes, he does not have to keep score, even if he then goes back above 5 minutes. However, once the time interval completes and either flag falls, a player must ensure his scoresheet is up to date before making further moves. Subsequent moves must then be recorded until the 5 minute threshold is breached again. ]
Peter Gill 20/10/2017