| Board | Rating | Leighton Buzzard A | V | Bedford A | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2328 | Tukpetov, EvgenyB | 1 – 0 | B Gardner, James | 2098 |
| 2 | 2065 | Kenworthy, GaryG | ½ – ½ | G Ledger, Stephen C | 2097 |
| 3 | 1982 | Hunt, PeterG | ½ – ½ | G Hale, Jack | 2075 |
| 4 | 1943 | Law, StephenB | ½ – ½ | B Arulnandhy, Ravi | 2057 |
| 5 | 1882 | Valentine, Brian JG | ½ – ½ | B Collacott, Nick | 2011 |
| Total | 10200 | 3 – 2 | 10338 |
Bedford A suffered an early season setback as we lost a very tight match 2-3 to LB A.
At the time of writing, I am expecting 3 house guests to arrive shortly before we fly off to foreign climes very early tomorrow, so the briefest of reports.
My own game was far from a thriller, as Gary Kenworthy didn’t play the most ambitious of openings, we both developed our bits, tucked our kings away then wedged some knights into the central squares. I accepted Gary’s draw offer after 16 moves as not much looked likely to happen.
Ravi soon followed with a relatively early peace. Initially, one may have hoped for some serious action as they played out some theory involving castling on opposite sides and chucking pawns forwards but when a couple of pieces, followed by queens, came off a draw was agreed.
So, two earlyish draws with our two blacks didn’t seem too bad a start.
I didn’t see much of the other games but from briefly chatting afterwards / on the way home …..
Not sure a lot happened in Jack’s game and most of the pieces were traded to what looked like a pretty dull rook ending (when I popped off for a pint 🙂- )
I don’t think there was a lot of action in Nick’s game either, he didn’t make much headway and another draw was duly agreed.
This left James playing the 2328 rated Tukpetov and here we did actually have some fireworks. I think James went wrong early, against Tukepetov’s e4 Nc6 reply, but then more than fought back into the game and, apparently, was +6 at one stage. James could have traded Q’s for a very good ending a pawn up butwent all in for a mating attack, sacc’ing a rook, that wasn’t quite there. An unfortunate conclusion but Tukepetov does have an annoying habit of hanging on in there, gaining time on the clock and somehow delivering the bacon.
Next up, Luton A at the start of November.
As an aside, and talking of my imminent trip to foreign climes, I am off to Montenegro with my 4NCL team to play in the European Club Cup.
if anyone is interested, details can be found here => Chess-Results Server Chess-results.com – 41st European Chess Club Cup
A cursory glance will show that there are some seriously good players and teams playing and one may also note that my team (Blackthorne)
are currently seeded 55th of 108 teams which could put us on Board 1 in the first round where the opposition average a mere 2715 !!
I guess things could change though so we shall see. The games will probably be live on the usual Chess.Com, Lichess etc from Saturday.
Steve Ledger, 14/10/2026.