The division two derby match was a titanic battle – a joint(?) report from both team captains.
- Alex and Richard fought out a Sicilian and agreed a fairly early draw.
- Chris got nothing as white out of a Catalan Opening (“… need better opening preparation – story of my chess life!”) and was forced to go into a QRR v QRR middlegame with black having the advantage of a Qside majority. Gerry declined an opportunity to go into a probably advantageous Rook ending and Chris managed to hold the draw.
- Callum built up a strong attack against Peter and always appeared (at least!) to be in control.
- Ben pushed a phalanx of pawns into Mac’s position but met strong resistance. When Ben failed to capitalise on his space advantage, Mac unravelled his position to win well.
At two points each, all eyes then turned to board two – John had got the worst of the opening against Peter, but fought through to a K+4P each ending (“Peter amazed me by swapping queens into a seemingly lost K&P ending but our resident expert, the correspondence GM Joe ‘Stockfish’ Valerio, declared the game a draw from the word go!” – Chris) whereupon he turned down Peter’s draw offer. The outcome of the game (and the match) then seemed to swing from side to side before finally ending in a draw, to halve the match.
The captains’ final quotes:-
“With just under a minute left Peter was K+Q vs K+P+P and accepted a draw offer, causing shouts of derision from the spectators…. it’s fair to say that the D team were more pleased with the result than the C team!” – John.
“Victory was snatched from our grasp by Peter’s draw offer but a draw was a fair result to both game and match.” – Chris
| Home Team: Bedford D | Away Team: Bedford C | ||||||
| Board | Name | Grade | Score | Score | Name | Grade | |
| 1 | Richard T Bodily | 140e | 0.5 | 0.5 | Alex Taylor | 158 | |
| 2 | John J Harbour | 141 | 0.5 | 0.5 | Peter S Gill | 133 | |
| 3 | Gerry Nolan | 110e | 0.5 | 0.5 | Chris Hill | 134 | |
| 4 | Callum T Shields | 123 | 1 | 0 | Peter T Housden | 102 | |
| 5 | Ben Pike | 80e | 0 | 1 | RW (Mac) MacKenzie | 72 | |
| Date Played: 27/02/2014 | 2.5 | 2.5 | |||||