Brighton 3 vs St Francis

Written by Kevin Gee.

The last game of the season against the team at the bottom of division 2, unfortunately Captain Michael Cain had to drop out at short notice and I took his place. Things started well when Felix beat David quite quickly then Brian Izzard and his opponent agreed a draw fairly early on. I didn’t see how Arthur’s game went but I think he said he blundered, in any case his game ended in defeat.

An interesting position arose in my game, my opponent played a very unusual (and probably suspect!) second move against my Scandinavian which allowed me to gain a tempo and I built up a very strong attack. Unfortunately at move nineteen I allowed my opponent to place his knight in on e5 and couldn’t see a way to maintain pressure. I was conscious that I lost initiative over the next few moves, but by this time I was under time pressure and on move twenty-five I made a fatal blunder allowing my opponent to capture my bishop for no loss, credit to him for spotting this tactic when under pressure. As they say ‘loose pieces drop off’ and leaving my queen undefended on e7 helped to create the right environment for a mistake. Interestingly it turns out that the way to refute 19. Ne5 is to capture the knight, the key idea being that if white’s queen doesn’t defend g4 black can play Ng4++ !! This as completely winning for black, I don’t think I should be too hard on myself for not spotting this, but I certainly wish I had !! Annoyingly I HAD seen some of the mating ideas such as Rxh3+ (if the h3 pawn is undefended) and Ng4 earlier, but I failed to extend this to exploiting the idea that white’s queen has to stay on the diagonal to cover g4. The game actually went on further than I recorded but as I was short of time that I stopped writing my moves down, I eventually resigned on move thirty-seven (the game is attached, I think it is worth a look). All very disappointing as I realised at the time I had a winning position but couldn’t see how to proceed.



This left Steve Thomas to save our honour and he certainly kept us on tenterhooks with a rook and pawn ending that went on past 11 o’ clock. When I started watching Steve was pushing a passed pawn but at the same time had to be careful as his opponent had a protected passed pawn (if memory serves). At one point I was convinced Steve had blown it but he played on coolly and eventually his opponent succumbed, nice work!


Cheers,

Kevin.