A slightly surreal Tuesday evening where before even the pumpkins were carved we were already in a knockout match against the Norwich Don Buccaneers. We made our separate ways to the Norwich County Arts Club, when given the massive bowling presence, all concerned decided to eschew the Spanish Opening.
We were outrated on all four boards. On Board 3, Brian Jeffery played a very solid Scandinavian against Anthony Hall with 2…Qxd5, Nc3 Qd8 etc and then planted his bishop on f5, pawns on e6 and c6 and held our new Crusader to a draw. As I began to run into complications in my game, I didn’t see too much of Simon’s, he had a better pawn structure with Jim McAvoy’s c pawns being doubled but suddenly I walked past and the game was over and Jim’s Queen wasn’t on the board in the final position! One up to the Crusaders. Jeff Dawson played extremely aggressively against me in a sort of Benoni Pirc hybrid. I moved my knight to c4 to attack his weak d6-pawn, but he uncorked the sacrifice …Nxe4. After Nxe4, …d5 forking my two knights, so it continued Ne4-g5 dxc4, Ne6 Qh4, Nxf8 Nxf8 and I emerged the exchange up but facing a big attack. The engine says the best move for me was to go grabbing his queenside pawns with my Queen but I felt uncomfortable leaving it offside with black bishops coming to d5 and e5 to assist the Queen on h4. So I forced the Queen exchange and conceded back the exchange, albeit to a position I was a pawn up. At this point, Nathan agreed a draw with David Dempster, who had shown is penchant for g3 systems again with a Vienna featuring the fianchetto. This seemed sensible given the match situation. I then proceeded to needlessly complicate my game through a mistake. I had a bishop on b3, he had a pawn on c5 and rook on d4. He played …c4 attacking the bishop, and I played the ‘principled’ Ke3 counterattacking the rook and centralising the king… however I failed to spot that after …cxb3, Kxd4, …b2 I can’t actually stop the pawn so I ended up recapturing on b3, and ended up with a complicated endgame. I felt I had marginally the better chances, with my pawns on b4, a6, and in the final conflagration f4, g5, h5 vs g6, h5 and an extra knight. There was indeed a win at one point, the last move before I stopped recording, where I sacrifice the f-pawn with f4-f5 and push the g-pawn. I had thought that his rook can defend it from behind but as it turned out I do have time to get the a pawn to a7 and g-pawn to g7 and win. Thus the game ended in a draw and we advance through to the quarters to play either one of the other round 1 winners or Fakenham, Lowestoft and Norfolk and Norwich who had a bye. Mark
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October 2022
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