| Board | Rating | Bedford C | V | Bedford D | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1747 | Shields, Callum T | 1 – 0 | Mangarayi, Abigail | 1636 |
| 2 | 1683 | Potts, Alexander | 1 – 0 | Gill, Peter S | 1606 |
| 3 | 1446 | Walker, Nigel B | 0 – 1 | Bennett, Stephen J | 0000 |
| 4 | 1438 | Madhadi, Rishik | 1 – 0 | Evans, Andy | 1445 |
| 5 | 0000 | Graf, FrancescoG | 0 – 1 | Dairi, Daniella | 0966 |
| Total | 6314 | 3 – 2 | 5653 |
BCL Division 2 Thu 9th Oct 2025
The season got underway on Thursday with the traditional Bedford derby curtain-raiser, this time between the C and D teams. There were three players making their first appearances for the club (well, two technically, although the third hadn’t represented the club since I was in nappies.) Also making his debut as D team captain was Mahmoud, who took a leaf out of his predecessor’s book and chose not to field himself. The contest itself went right down to the wire, with some keenly fought games.
Mine was the first to finish – a turgid, drawish nothingburger of a game (see below) … just kidding. I couldn’t resist popping a Greek gift sacrifice on move 10, although I suspected it might be unsound (it was) I backed myself to outplay Peter in the resulting position, that I knew would be out of his comfort zone. He failed to find the narrow path to safety and got his king sucked up the board to its doom. I at least bought him a drink afterwards by way of apology – first blood to the C team.
The next to finish was our returning prodigal son, Steve Bennett. And he rolled back the years, with a solid performance, reaching an equal middlegame and spotting a sharp chance to win an exchange. Thereafter he did an excellent job of eliminating counterplay and trading down into a winning endgame – Nigel resigned when the loss of a couple more weak pawns was inevitable. So that result levelled up the scoreboard.
Rishik (filling in from the E team) and Andy (free to play now he’s no longer a captain!) were the next to finish. It looked like a tight game but one where Rishik always had the upper hand due to an extra pawn that he won quite early in proceedings. Eventually he managed to strip away Andy’s king safety and line up the cannons for an attack that forced a decisive material advantage – C team back in front.
Bottom board between the two young guns Daniella and Francesco – the latter playing his first game for the club as well as I believe his first ever game under classical time controls – was a bit a rollercoaster. Daniella had the advantage of an exchange heading into the endgame, but Francesco had far-advanced pawns that looked like they might give him drawing chances at least; in addition, Daniella was down to only a couple of minutes on her clock. Under great pressure she managed to halt the advance of Francesco’s pawns while forcing him to give up his bishop to stop hers, leaving her with an easy win. All square once more. See game below.
Which left a winner-takes-all match on the top board between Callum and Abigail. And it was quite the double-edged position, where Callum had chosen to wreck his own pawn structure to create open lines. He fended off what looked like a sneaky kingside attack from Abigail, and then counterattacked on the open f-file. As her clock ticked down, Abigail saw the writing on the wall – she smiled and suggested that she was looking for “the prettiest way to lose”, as the heavy artillery pointed at her king proved overwhelming. A couple of moves later she resigned, and that was the match!
Overall an excellent match with some good chess being played on both sides. And with so many promising new (and returning!) players, the club looks to be in rude health.
Alex Potts, 10th October 2025