News

Bedford C slogged over to Milton Keynes to face the Open University in one final match before the festive break. OU I gather have a commendably egalitarian squad rotation policy, and luckily for us that meant their regular top board was cheering from the sidelines. So, a good opportunity to get one more win under our belts and go into the holidays on a high. 

Facing the infamously fast Dexter Lazard, it was perhaps unsurprising that my game on board 2 finished first. I steered the game into a tricky Grunfeld defence where I could apply a lot of pressure to white’s centre, culminating in a nice knight sacrifice that netted me a pawn with the white king still stranded in the middle. It was already a very tough, probably objectively losing position for Dexter, but his blitz-speed play caught up with him as he blundered into a mate in one a few moves later and made my job easier than it should have been – I guess Christmas is a time for charity! 

[White "Dexter Lazard"] [Black "Alex Potts"] [Result "0-1"]1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nc3 d5 4. Nf3 Bg7 5. Bg5 {I was pleased to see this move as I'd just coincidentally played another game in the Petrosian variation of the Grunfeld the previous week, and had had a look at some of the ideas after the game. So I was probably more prepared for this position than my opponent.} Ne4 6. Bf4  ({For those not versed in this opening, the d5 pawn is safe, as } 6 Nxd5?? Nxg5 7 Nxg5 e6{ with a double-attack on both knights.}) Nxc3 7. bxc3 c5 8. e3 O-O 9. Bd3 Nc6 10. cxd5 Qxd5 11. e4 {This is too aggressive from white, opening up the centre and weakening himself along the long dark-squared diagonal is surely not worth it just to kick the queen. Castle first!}Qd8 {So the d4 pawn is attacked four times and defended only twice. White would love to be able to move his pawn back to e3, but pawns can't go backward! The engine actually wants white to give up his rook with 12 d5, but no human is ever going to play that move.} 12. Bb5 {White must have been relying on this move to add one more defender to d4 while threatening to remove one of my attackers, where it looks like he is holding his centre together. However...} Nxd4 {I'll just use the attacker before it can be removed! All of white's weaknesses – the long diagonal, his uncastled king, and his loose bishop – work in concert to enable this tactic.}13. cxd4 Qa5+ 14. Qd2 Qxb5 15. a4 Qc4 16. Rc1 Qxa4 17. Rxc5 b6 18. Rc7 Qa1+({My only real inaccuracy of the game. The engine reckons I should give back the pawn here and commit fully to the plan of keeping white's king stuck in no-man's land with 18 ...Ba6. (Especially since this was the main purpose of 17 ...b6.) Here I focused too much   on holding on to the material, in general I'd much rather have a material advantage where I can turn the screw and maybe eventually win an endgame, than a theoretically larger dynamic advantage which requires precise play. In this case, however, it isn't too hard to calculate that something like} 18 ...Ba6 19 Rxe7 Rfc8 20 h4 Bf8 21 Re5 Bb4 {is completely winning for black.} )19. Rc1 Qa6 20. Qb4 Bg4 21. Ne5 {Oops!} Qe2# {A tad anticlimactic, but to be fair black was much better anyway.}0-1

Our guest star Steve also put in an accomplished board-4 performance against a very experienced opponent in Dave Phillips. His game looked like one of those based around the solid and steady accumulation of advantages, making the most of his bishop pair on a board with an open pawn structure to apply severe kingside pressure. Eventually the threats became overwhelming, and his opponent resigned when the alternative would have been to throw away a whole piece. 

Francesco’s game on board 5, on the other hand, seemed dead even, it looked for all the world like a draw, more and more so when all the pieces came off and the players were down to both six pawns apiece. Perhaps aware of the results on surrounding boards, his opponent Mark Osborn tried to push for a win that really wasn’t there, Francesco got the outside passed pawn, and that ended up deciding both the game and the match as we had collectively raced into an unassailable three-nil lead. 

If Francesco’s game looked drawish because of all the pieces being traded off, Nigel’s board-3 endeavour seemed lifeless for the opposite reason – a totally locked position with both sides’ armies stuck behind their own pawn chain. Matthew Jacques had just the one open file to work with – but to my surprise that was all he needed, as Nigel’s pieces were somewhat tripping over each other on a cramped board, and unable to defend their monarch. The final position was aesthetically remarkable, with a V-shaped pawn wedge reminiscent of this old Capablanca game – Matthew might play chess for the rest of his life and never win another game like that. 

So that left us with the top board – and boy, did Callum put both Vincent Edwards and the spectators through the wringer. It looked like he’d been a bit adventurous in the middlegame, saccing a couple of pawns for an attack and then not finding the decisive follow-up, leaving him playing catch-up. Additionally he was down to under a minute on the clock, and yet he hustled remarkably, constantly finding complications in a position that remained sharp even after the queens came off, and even popping a bishop sacrifice (which none of us could work out whether it was sound or not), eventually reaching equality with both players now in time trouble. And then – after all that hard work, after a Lazarus-like display of brinkmanship – he hung a knight fork. Game over, and Vincent could breathe a sigh of relief. 

Not that it mattered to the overall match result, which had been wrapped up some time ago. Overall a satisfactory evening with fighting chess from all, and with the B team also knocking over Milton Keynes A on the other side of the playing hall, we could all go home happy. 

Alex Potts, 12th December 2025